Karen Ashby Flack is an American

mechanical engineer Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations of ...

specializing in experimental

fluid dynamics In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids— liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) an ...

. She is a professor of mechanical engineering at the

United States Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. The Naval Academy ...

Education and career

Flack studied mechanical engineering at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

, graduating in 1986. After working for Rockwell Space Operations Company at the

Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late U ...

and then earning a master's degree at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1988, she completed her Ph.D. at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1993, and in the same year joined the Naval Academy faculty. She became a full professor there in 2004 and chaired the mechanical engineering department from 2014 to 2018.

Recognition

In 2014, Flack was named a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of American Physic ...

(APS), after a nomination by the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, "for her clarifying work on the structure of three dimensional turbulent boundary layers, and for better characterizing the connections between surface roughness geometry and boundary layer drag".

Personal life

Flack married Navy pilot Jeff Flack in 1988.

References

External links

Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flack, Karen Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American mechanical engineers American women engineers Rice University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Stanford University alumni United States Naval Academy faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society American women academics 21st-century American women