LOUIS M. SARDELLA, Engr. 1969, was the founder of Sun Automation Group, an international company that manufactures machinery used in corrugated box production. Mr. Sardella, who held 17 patents, traced his success back to his undergraduate years at Hopkins. “Professors challenged us and taught us to think critically, and it opened up the world for me.”
Mr. Sardella passed away in 2020. He was a longtime supporter of the Whiting Engineering School, serving as a member of the National Advisory Council, and in 1999 endowed the Sardella Scholarship Fund in gratitude for the assistance he received as an undergraduate. The Baltimore native established this professorship as a way of recognizing the tremendous effect faculty can have on students and the institution at large, and also as a way of supporting the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Held by Charles Meneveau
CHARLES MENEVEAU, the inaugural Louis M. Sardella Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, with a joint appointment in Geography and Environmental Engineering. He is also the director of Hopkins’ Center of Environmental and Applied Fluid Mechanics. A member of Hopkins faculty since 1990, he researches the understanding and modeling of hydrodynamic turbulence and complexity in fluid mechanics in general. Special emphasis is placed on the multi-scale aspects of turbulence using appropriate tools such as subgrid-scale modeling, downscaling techniques, fractal geometry, wavelet analysis and applications to large eddy simulation. The insights that have emerged from Professor Meneveau’s work have led to new numerical models for computational fluid dynamics and applications in engineering and environmental flows. With his students and co-workers, he has authored over 80 peer-reviewed articles.
Professor Meneveau is fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He received the 2004 UCAR Outstanding Publication Award (with students and other colleagues at Hopkins and NCAR), the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2003), and the APS’ François N. Frenkiel Award for Fluid Mechanics (2001). He is the joint editor-in-chief of the Journal of Turbulence, an associate editor for the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and is a member of the editorial committee of the Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics.