Joseph Katz, the William F. Ward Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, and member of the National Academy of Engineering, is known for his outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, and education and advances in developing optical methods in experimental fluid mechanics for turbomachinery, cavitation, turbulence, and environmental flows. He is a professor of mechanical engineering.
Katz’s research focuses on experimental fluid mechanics and the development of advanced diagnostics techniques for laboratory and field applications. The Laboratory for Experimental Fluid Dynamics, which he directs, has studied laboratory and oceanic turbulent boundary layers, flows, and instabilities in turbomachines, flow-structure interactions, the swimming behavior of marine plankton in the laboratory and in the ocean, as well as cavitation, bubble, and droplet dynamics in different systems. He has co-authored more than 150 journal papers, 220 conference papers, several book chapters, and has seven patents. Katz’s research has been funded by the Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, NASA, Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, Airforce Office of Scientific Research, Department of Energy, NOAA (CRRC), as well as Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
He co-founded and currently directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Environmental and Applied Fluid Mechanics. Katz is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Physical Society (APS), and his numerous awards include the 2004 ASME Fluids Engineering Award.