Peter Vadasz  

Educational background

  • BSc - Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
  • MSc - Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,  Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
  • DSc - Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Academic appointments

  • Northern Arizona University - Department of Mechanical Engineering
    • July 2002 - June 2008: Professor and Department Chair
    • July 2008 - present: Professor of Mechanical Engineering
     
  • University of Durban Westville, South Africa, 1991-2002 
  • 1992-1998; Professor and Head- Department of Mechanical Engineering
  • 1998-2002; Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Courses taught

  • fluid mechanics
  • thermodynamics
  • engineering economics
  • heat transfer
  • modeling of bioengineering processes
  • nonlinear dynamics and chaos

Honors & awards

  • Vadasz Number (VA) – proposed by B. Straughan in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A (457, No. 2005, 87-93, 2001) and subsequently adopted by S. Lombardo & G. Mulone in Continuum Mech. Thermodyn. (14, 527-540, 2002), S. Govender in Transport in Porous Media (51, 315-326, 2003), B. Straughan in Proc. Royal Society of London A (480, 2913-2927, 2004), Mulone and Straughan in ZAMM (86, 507-520, 2006), S. Govender in Transport in Porous Media (63, 489-502, 2006)
  • NRF “A” rating awarded to South African scientists who are identified as “World Leaders, for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs”, 2000
  • Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation – 2004 - present
  • Fellow of ASME – American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1998 - present.
  • Award of Fellow of the University of Durban-Westville “for distinguished academic work of such quality as to recommend special recognition locally and internationally”, 1997
  • ASME Board of Governors Award “for valued services in advancing the engineering profession as ASME South Africa Correspondent September 1994 - September 1995”, 1996

Professional qualifications

  • PrEng - Professional Registration with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) (1992-2006)
  • PR - Professional Registration with the Israeli Registrar of Engineers and Architects
  • FASME - Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
  • FSAIMechE - Fellow of the South African Institution of Mechanical Engineering (SAIMechE) (1992-2002)
  • MNYAcadSci - Member of the New York Academy of Sciences (1995-1996)
  • MIsrBEA - Member of the Israeli Board of Engineers and Architects (1980-1990).

Research interests

  • heat and mass transfer and fluid dynamics 
  • nanotechnology - nano-heat transfer 
  • bioengineering 
  • transport phenomena in porous media 
  • nonlinear dynamics - stability, bifurcations and routes to chaos 

Books

Recent chapters in books

  • VADASZ, P.: "Free Convection in Rotating Porous Media", Transport Phenomena in Porous Media, I. Pop and D.B. Ingham (ed), Elsevier Science, pp.285-312, 1998 ( invited chapter )
  • VADASZ, P.: "The Impact of Energy Storage Technologies on the Environment", Energy and the Environment, Bejan, A., Vadasz, P., and Kröger, D. G., (ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp.135-147, 1999 ( invited chapter )
  • VADASZ, P.: “Fluid Flow and Thermal Convection in Rotating Porous Media” & “Weak Turbulence and Transitions to Chaos in Porous Media”, , Handbook of Porous Media, Marcel Dekker, New York, pp.395-439 & pp.699-754, 2000 (invited chapters)
  • VADASZ, P.: "Compressed Air Energy Storage" in Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) - Energy Storage Systems, ed. Yalsin Gogus, UNESCO Eolss Publishers, Oxford, UK, 2002, (invited chapter)
  • VADASZ, P.: “Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Rotating Porous Media”, in Computational Methods in Water Resources (Vol. 1), S.M. Hassanizadeh, R.J. Schotting, W.G. Gray & G.F. Pinder (eds.), Development in Water Science, Vol. 47, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 469-476, 2002 (ISBN: 0-444-50975, ISSN: 0167-5648)
  • VADASZ, P., VADASZ, A.S.: “Ecological Models: Microbial Models”, in Encyclopedia of Ecology, Sven Erik Jorgensen (ed.), Elsevier, accepted for publication, in press (invited chapter), 2008
  • VADASZ, P.: “Analytical transition to weak turbulence and chaotic natural convection in porous media“, in Emerging Topics in Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Media, P. Vadasz (ed.) Springer Science, 2008
  • VADASZ, P.: “Nanofluid suspensions and bi-composite media as derivatives of interface heat transfer modeling in porous media “, in Emerging Topics in Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Media, P. Vadasz (ed.) Springer Science, 2008

Journal publications