Rate My Professor Jayantha Sirohi

Jayant Sirohi is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, holding the M.J. Thompson Regents Professorship in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics as well as the Eli H. and Ramona Thornton Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Engineering. He received a B.Tech. in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 1996, an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland in 1998, and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2002. Following his doctoral studies, he held positions as Research Associate and Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Maryland. From 2007 to 2008, he served as Senior Engineer and then Staff Engineer in the Advanced Concepts group at Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, where he contributed to conceptual designs for next-generation vertical take-off aircraft and performance enhancements for rotorcraft. He joined UT Austin as Assistant Professor in 2008, advancing to Associate Professor in 2014 and Professor in 2019.

Sirohi's research specializations include active materials, sensors and actuators, smart and multifunctional structures, energy harvesting, micro and unmanned aerial vehicles, vertical lift aircraft, fixed-wing and rotary-wing aeroelasticity, and experimental aerodynamics and structural dynamics. He directs the UT Aeroelasticity Lab and was Principal Investigator for the Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence funded by the U.S. Army, Navy, and NASA from 2011 to 2021. His contributions have earned him the Vertical Flight Society Technical Fellow Award in 2021 for pioneering work on smart sensors and actuators in vertical lift and experimental research on coaxial rotor systems, AIAA Associate Fellow in 2015, ASE/EM LUNAR Council Teaching Award in 2015, and Technical Chair of the AHS International Forum in 2017. He has received multiple best paper awards, including the ASME/Boeing Best Paper Award in 2011 for 'Measurement of Strain in Rotating Helicopter Blades Using Digital Image Correlation' and the Rotor Dynamics Session Best Paper Award in 2012 for 'Modeling of the Large Deformations of an Extremely Flexible Rotor Blade'. Key publications include 'Fundamental understanding of piezoelectric strain sensors' (Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, 2000), 'Piezoelectric wind energy harvester for low-power sensors' (Smart Materials and Structures, 2011), and 'Multirotor drone noise at static thrust' (AIAA Journal, 2018).