AME Seminar: Mark J. Lewis
Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 4:00 p.m.
Mark J. Lewis
President and CEO
Purdue Applied Research Institute, LLC
Purdue University
"Hypersonic Flight: This Time It’s (Almost Certainly) Different"
Zoom link
Abstract: Hypersonic flight, referring to flight in excess of about five times the speed of sound, has many military and civilian applications, ranging from nearly unstoppable weapons to globe-spanning aircraft. While the first human-made hypersonic vehicles were flown in the late 1940’s, the field has experienced a long history of on-again, off-again development cycles, Every few years a new, often overly-ambitious program has begun, only to fail or be cancelled. Despite inventing the discipline and doing most of the early research and development work, the United States finds itself today in the position of having peer competitor nations that have surpassed us in many ways, building and deploying actual hypersonic weapons while our programs are stuck in the development and demonstration phase. This talk will present some of the history of hypersonics, review some of the key technical challenges and accomplishments, and describe current efforts in the United States and elsewhere. Top research needs will also be discussed, with an eye towards testing, evaluations, and programmatic choices that can reestablish U.S. leadership in the field.
Bio: Dr. Mark J. Lewis is the inaugural president and chief executive officer of the Purdue Applied Research Institute LLC (PARI), the non-profit research arm of Purdue University, created to apply advanced technologies to tackle critical challenges in national security, infrastructure, and economic prosperity. Prior to this position, Dr. Lewis was the executive director of the Emerging Technologies Institute (ETI), a non-partisan think tank sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association. Dr. Lewis joined NDIA following his service as the director of defense research and engineering in the Department of Defense, overseeing technology modernization for all Services and DOD Agencies, as well as the acting deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. In that role he was the Pentagon’s senior-most scientist, managing a $17B budget that included DARPA, the Missile Defense Agency, the Defense Innovation Unit, the Space Development Agency, as well as the federally-funded Research and Development Centers, and the department’s basic and applied research portfolio. From 2012 to 2019, Dr. Lewis was the director of the Science and Technology Policy Institute, a federally-funded Research and Development Center that supported the Executive Office of the President and other Executive Branch agencies in the formulation of national science and technology policy. Dr. Lewis is a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, where he served as the Willis Young, Jr. Professor and Chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering until 2012. A faculty member at Maryland for 25 years, Dr. Lewis taught and conducted basic and applied research in the fields of hypersonic aerodynamics, advanced propulsion, space vehicle design and optimization. Best known for his work in hypersonics, Dr. Lewis’s research has spanned the aerospace flight spectrum from the analysis of conventional jet engines to entry into planetary atmospheres.