Juan Alonso

Prof. Juan Alonso is the Vance D. and Arlene C. Coffman Professor and James & Anna Marie Spilker Chair in the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics at Stanford University. He directs the Aerospace Design Laboratory (ADL), focusing on high-fidelity computational methods for aerospace system design. His expertise spans transonic/supersonic/hypersonic aircraft, rotorcraft, and launch vehicles. Alumni include record-holding teams for human-powered watercraft and lightweight unmanned aerial vehicles.

Education: PhD (1997) from Princeton University in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering; M.A. (1993) Princeton; B.S. (1991) MIT Aeronautics/Astronautics.

Research emphasizes multi-disciplinary optimization, numerical methods, and parallel computing applied to advanced aircraft design, sustainable aviation, and UAS systems. Notable contributions include computational design frameworks like SU2 and SUAVE, and initiatives in curriculum development for engineering education.

Recent work focuses on: GPU-accelerated CFD solvers, multi-fidelity surrogate models (e.g., VortexNet), contrail simulation frameworks, and battery degradation modeling for electric aircraft. Active in urban air mobility and high-fidelity trajectory optimization for hypersonic systems.

Labs/Teams: Aerospace Design Laboratory (ADL) leading open-source computational tools development. Involved in NASA-funded projects and industry partnerships for advanced propulsion systems.