Prof.Sumanta Acharya holds the L. R. Daniel professorship and the Fritz & Francis Blumer professorship in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Louisiana State University (LSU). He is the founding director of the Center for Turbine Innovation and Energy Research which focuses on energy generation and propulsion research.
Since September 2010 he is on assignment (2010-2014) from LSU at the National Science Foundation as the Program Director of the Thermal Transport Program in the Engineering Directorate.
Professor Acharya received his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, and his PhD from the University of Minnesota. Following his PhD, he joined the faculty of mechanical engineering at LSU. Prof. Acharya has developed a multifaceted research program in heat transfer with a focus on gas turbine heat transfer and computational heat transfer.
His scholarly contributions include mentoring nearly 85 post-doctoral researchers and graduate students, and publishing nearly 190 refereed journal articles and book chapters and over 230 refereed conference /proceedings papers. Prof. Acharya’s research has been continuously supported by federal funding agencies and industries with nearly 25 million dollars of funded research during his LSU career, and includes major efforts in the area of gas turbineaerodynamics and heat transfer, combustion, computational fluid dynamics and fundamental heat transfer.
Prof. Acharya’s research work has been recognized through best paper awards including one from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Turbo Expo and Congress in 2006. He is an ASME Fellow, and previous Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Heat Transfer and ASME Journal of Energy Resources Technology. He was awarded the 2011 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award in the Science category and the 75th ASME Heat Transfer Division Medal in 2013.