The National Academy of Engineering is recognizing Brian Argrow as a new member for 2022. The distinction is one of the highest an engineer can receive in their career.
As a professor and chair of the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, Argrow has conducted major research to advance uncrewed aerial systems to increase our understanding of supercell thunderstorms that can spawn tornados.
Argrow joined CU Boulder in 1992 and was originally focused primarily on computational fluid dynamics, particularly for potential hypersonic vehicles. It is still an ongoing area for his research, but at the time, the field was quite small and the aerospace department leadership was eager to have more research in applied aerodynamics, particularly autonomous systems or drones.
Because he had a personal interest in meteorology from a childhood growing up in rural Oklahoma, where tornadoes are a fact of life, Argrow saw potential to use drones to study storms. He decided to branch out into the subject.
To begin his work in the area, Argrow needed a drone. Although quad copters are now widely available, drones were far harder to come by in 1994. He got in touch with a professor at his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma.
