UT Tyler Professor to Aid NASA with Planned Lunar Missions
June 24, 2020
UT Tyler Office of Marketing and Communications
UT Tyler Professor to Aid NASA with Planned Lunar Missions
Follow @UTTyler TweetJune 24, 2020
Media Contact: Beverley Golden
Senior Director of Media Relations
Marketing and Communications
The University of Texas at Tyler
903.566.7303
The University of Texas at Tyler announced today that Dr. M. A. Rafe Biswas, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the UT Tyler Houston Engineering Center, has been named one of eight summer 2020 NASA Faculty Glenn Fellows.
His contributions as a Glenn Fellow will be instrumental in NASA’s ongoing effort to send humans back to the moon by 2024. Biswas will work this summer for the Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland, Ohio developing innovative, renewable fuel cell systems that will power spacecrafts to be used for the proposed lunar missions.
The 10-week 2020 NASA Glenn Faculty Fellowship Program traditionally is a residential research program open to full-time science, technology, engineering and mathematics faculty members who are US citizens teaching at accredited US universities and colleges. Fellows will conduct work remotely this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We congratulate Dr. Biswas on obtaining this prestigious fellowship, which expands upon our national recognition and enhances our already strong partnership with NASA,” said Dr. Amir Mirmiran, UT Tyler provost and vice president for academic affairs. “This honor also provides a great example of the diverse scholarship and research capabilities of the faculty within our College of Engineering.”
This year, preference was given to new applicants whose interests and qualifications match the mission and needs of GRC. Biswas currently is a NASA Johnson Space Center Faculty Research Associate Engineer through a cooperative agreement between the University and NASA. He most recently collaborated with NASA’s Johnson Space Center on fuel cell systems and energy sources.
His expertise and interest include thermal fluid science, control theory, process and system dynamics, fuel cell systems and engineering education. Biswas is a co-inventor of a patent on control architecture for direct methanol fuel cell systems. He also co-authored several journal and conference publications on various topics including fuel cells, thermal management, software verification and residential building energy modeling.
Serving UT Tyler since 2014, Biswas teaches courses in system dynamics and control; process control and energy conversion; and thermal fluids. He also mentors HEC students on senior design projects. A member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, Biswas holds degrees from the University of Florida and Auburn University.
NASA GRC offers a unique blend of aeronautics and space research, technology development and space flight experience. As the lead NASA Center for aircraft propulsion from subsonic to hypersonic speed, GRC develops new and innovative turbomachinery technology to improve the reliability and performance, efficiency and affordability, capacity; and environmental compatibility of future aeronautical and space propulsion systems.
A member of the prestigious UT System, The University of Texas at Tyler focuses on student success and innovative research in the more than 80 undergraduate and graduate degree programs offered to nearly 10,000 students. Classified by Carnegie as a doctoral research institution and by U.S. News and World Report as a national university, UT Tyler has campuses in Tyler, Longview, Palestine and Houston.