Scott T. M. DawsonView profile
Assistant Professor
Scott T. M. Dawson is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering Department at Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech). He holds positions in the Armour College of Engineering and leads research at the intersection of fluid mechanics, dynamical systems, control theory, and data science. His work focuses on extracting dynamic models from large datasets to analyze and control turbulent flows and unsteady aerodynamic systems. Education includes a Ph.D. and M.A. from Princeton University (2017, 2013), and B.Eng. and B.S. degrees from Monash University (2010, 2009). Prior to Illinois Tech, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech’s Graduate Aerospace Laboratories under Prof. Beverley McKeon. Research interests emphasize reduced-order modeling, data-driven techniques for fluid flows, and flow control applications. His group’s work is supported by NSF, AFOSR, and DOE grants. Recent projects include sparsity-promoting methods for flow analysis, wavelet-based resolvent analysis, and neural network-driven flow control systems. Publications span over 60 peer-reviewed articles, with a focus on turbulence modeling, transient flow dynamics, and machine learning integration in fluid mechanics. Key contributions include novel algorithms for isolating amplification mechanisms in wall-bounded flows and robust neural network frameworks for closed-loop flow stabilization. Grants and collaborations include multi-year NSF CAREER funding for automated distillation of coherent flow structures. Ongoing efforts explore time-localized spectral methods, nonlinear dimensionality reduction, and hydrogen decarbonization in vehicular systems.









