Mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Md Badrul Hasan received the 2025 Professor Kirti “Karman” Ghia Memorial Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics for his research modeling the fluid flow inside hurricanes with physics-informed machine learning. 

The award recognizes an international graduate student in the U.S. who has developed an innovative approach to computational fluid dynamics, in which computers are used to analyze and predict how fluids flow, with applications in aerospace engineering, weather forecasting, and more. 

Hasan and his UMBC mentors—Meilin Yu, mechanical engineering, and Tim Oates, computer science and electrical engineering—looked at the layer of atmosphere in a hurricane that is directly above the ocean surface. Called the hurricane boundary layer, it is where turbulent flows bring heat and moisture from the water into the air, and it plays a crucial role in determining a hurricane’s intensity and track.

Hasan says he is grateful for the guidance of Professor Oates in selecting and understanding the machine learning models. “It was a great team effort between mechanical engineering and computer science—really productive and rewarding for both sides,” he says.