Rate My Professor Matthew McGilvray

Professor Matthew McGilvray is Professor of Engineering Science in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford. He received his Bachelor of Engineering and PhD from the University of Queensland, where he conducted high-speed flow research using expansion tube facilities to investigate scramjet engine design and performance, spacecraft aerothermodynamics, heat transfer, and rocket-based flight programs at Woomera Test Facility. In 2009, he joined the Oxford Thermofluids Institute as a research associate, researching engine-realistic turbine internal cooling passage performance and particle deposition in turbomachinery. Appointed Associate Professor at the University of Oxford in 2013 as Senior Research Fellow in Hypersonics, he tutored thermofluids at St Catherine’s, Brasenose, and St Hilda’s Colleges. In 2021, he was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering in partnership with the Ministry of Defence, leading the MoD Academic Centre of Excellence in Hypersonic Science and Technology. He was promoted to Professor of Engineering Science in 2023 through the University Recognition of Distinction Awards.

McGilvray has established research groups in hypersonics and particle deposition in gas turbines at Oxford. His research interests include high-speed aerothermodynamics and heat transfer, particle deposition in turbomachinery, and internal cooling heat transfer in gas turbines. He led the development of the Oxford High Density Tunnel (HDT) and T6 Stalker Tunnel, part of the UK’s National Wind Tunnel Facility, enabling replication of spacecraft and hypersonic vehicle conditions. Key projects encompass high-enthalpy wind tunnel upgrades, heat and shear stress augmentation from ablatives and protuberances, thermochemistry and radiation during planetary entry, transpiration cooling and pyrolysis gas effects, and numerical simulations of pulse facilities. He has supervised 17 graduated doctoral students and published 54 journal articles and 135 conference papers. Notable publications include “Performance of Transpiration-Cooled Heat Shields for Re-entry Vehicles” (AIAA Journal, 2020), “Commissioning of the Oxford High Density Tunnel (HDT) for Boundary Layer Stability Measurements” (AIAA Journal, 2018), “Development and Applications of a Coupled Particle Deposition—Dynamic Mesh Morphing Approach for the Numerical Simulation of Gas Turbine Flows” (Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power, 2018), “Gel-casting for Manufacturing Porous Alumina Ceramics with Complex Shapes for Transpiration Cooling” (Advances in Applied Ceramics, 2023), and “Spatial Transformations for Reacting Gas Shock Tube Experiments” (AIAA Journal, 2023). McGilvray was elected an AIAA Associate Fellow in 2026.