Daniel Kirk

Dr. Daniel R. Kirk is a Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the Florida Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Florida Tech in 2004, Dan completed his doctorate of philosophy (Ph.D.) and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics under a National Science Foundation Fellowship. He was the Valedictorian of the class of 1997 at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he majored in mechanical engineering with minors in astronomy and philosophy.

Dan’s research interests focus on air-breathing and rocket propulsion, experimental and computational fluid dynamics, shock tubes, combustion, and heat transfer. Dan has obtained over $3.5 million dollars in external funding, produced over 70 conference and journal publications, served as a visiting scholar at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and has managed research projects with NASA KSC, NASA MSFC, the United States Air Force and the Office of Naval Research. In collaboration with NASA and MIT, Dan’s research group is directing experiments onboard the International Space Station to study how liquid propellant slosh behavior may affect the dynamics of rocket motion. During the past 5 years, Dan has also developed a novel shock tube experimental methodology to study blast-induced traumatic brain injury mechanisms and modeling for Banyan Biomarkers, Inc. and the National Institute of Health. In 2009 Dan was selected as a Boeing Welliver Faculty Fellow.

Each year at Florida Tech Dan has won at least one teaching award, culminating in the 2008 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Ralph A. Teetor award for integration of research and teaching. He serves as the Florida Zeta chapter advisor for Tau Beta Pi, the National Engineering Honor Society, and he has planned multiple community service projects to expand the mission of the chapter. Dan is also an Associate Fellow in the America Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and he is serving as the 2013 Joint Propulsion Conference Academic Technical Chair. In his spare time, Dan enjoys studying the Polish and Russian languages, playing baseball, tennis, surfing, chess, running marathons and he is currently training for the Ironman Triathlon.