Pavlos Vlachos, professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, was recently named the John R. Jones III Faculty Fellow in Mechanical Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The Jones Fellowship was established in 2006 to acknowledge and reward mid-career faculty who have shown exceptional merit in research, teaching, and/or service. Jones, who earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1967, is a retired executive of American Electric Power and remains an active consultant to the power industry. He has been a member of the Department of Mechanical Engineering Advisory Board since 1998.

Vlachos received his Ph.D. in engineering mechanics from Virginia Tech in 1992 and joined the mechanical engineering department as an assistant professor in 2003. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2007; and promotion to full professor in 2011.

During his eight years on the Virginia Tech faculty, Vlachos has established an impressive record of productivity and scholarly accomplishments. He leads an strong research program in the area of experimental fluid mechanics, with a variety of applications including biomedical fluid devices. He has received more than $14 million in external funding and is a creative and innovative researcher who holds four patents and 10 intellectual property disclosures.

Vlachos also is well-known as an outstanding teacher and student advisor. While Vlachos has served as graduate advisor to 19 doctoral students and 23 master’s degree students, he says he is also committed to mentoring undergraduate students. He has worked closely with several undergraduate students in a variety of senior design projects. Many of his students have earned awards such as Best Senior Design Project, National Science Foundation graduate fellowships, and the Paul E. Torgersen Graduate Student Research Excellence Award.

Vlachos has written more than 40 peer-reviewed journal publications, 161 peer-reviewed conference papers, and 23 invited or keynote presentations. His work is published in leading journals and is widely cited. He currently serves as an associate editor for two archival journals, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Journal of Fluids Engineering and Frontiers in Computational Physiology and Medicine. He has served on several technical committees of the ASME, and is currently chair of the Fluid Measurement and Instrumentation Technical Committee of the Fluids Engineering Division.

Vlachos has won several awards, all reflecting his passion for scholarship and academic pursuits. Among the more notable and recent Virginia Tech awards are the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, College of Engineering Faculty Fellow Award, and the Dean’s List for Teaching Excellence. External awards include the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the ASME Fluids Engineering Division Moody Award for Most Outstanding Technical Paper, and the Outstanding Paper Award in Fluid Mechanics from the Journal of Measurement Science and Technology (Institute of Physics).

Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

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