Keith Walters

Keith Walters serves as Professor and Associate Department Head of Graduate Programs in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arkansas. He joined the university in August 2021, following his role as the Tom & Mary Dugan Professor at the University of Oklahoma (2016-2021) and a faculty position at Mississippi State University (2003-2016).

Dr. Walters holds a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University.

His research spans fluid mechanics and heat transfer with a primary focus on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), including turbulence modeling, numerical methods, and high-performance computing. Funded by NSF, NASA, DOD, DOE, and industry partners, his work has produced over 140 refereed publications, with computational models adopted into government, open source, and commercial CFD codes.

Dr. Walters has received significant recognition including:

• NSF CAREER award
• MSU Bagley College of Engineering Outstanding Researcher award
• MSU Bagley College of Engineering Academy of Distinguished Teachers
• ASME Robert T. Knapp Award (2016 and 2017)

He has held leadership roles as Chair of the ASME Fluids Engineering Division and ASME Fluids Applications and Systems Technical Committee, served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Fluids Engineering, and co-chaired the 2015 ASME-JSME-KSME Joint Fluids Engineering Summer Conference. At Mississippi State University, he directed the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems and coordinated Mississippi NSF EPSCoR.