Biography:
Mac Haas is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rowan University, where he serves as the Graduate Program Chair. Prior to joining Rowan in 2016, Mac earned his PhD in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University under the supervision of Fred Dryer. Before this, he earned separate BS degrees in Chemical and Environmental Engineering from Drexel University (2006), and he spent a short time in industry working for Fortune 100 and start-up companies in the energy sector, both in the US and in Turkey. Mac’s research interests range widely across the thermal sciences – from experimental elementary gas phase reaction kinetics to surrogate fuel formulation techniques to remote sensing and beyond. At present, he serves as Rowan’s co-lead on a multi-institutional Army-funded project in additive manufacturing while continuing research and service relevant to the combustion community (Combustion Institute, ASME ICED) and also serving as co-lead in raising three lovely children – two human and one feline.
Vision Statement:
Our combustion field approaches not a crossroads, but a cloverleaf. Opportunities present as intersections of traditional combustion disciplines with a tangle of emerging fields. But even at this moment, co-optimized fuels and engines are giving way – seemingly for real this time – to battery power. COP 26 underscores that even methane is not clean enough. The Combustion Cloverleaf is part of a complicated landscape in which the past can be reached from the future; in a short 15 years, hydrogen now has colors and it may once again be suitable for powering “fool cells.” Despite the dynamic context, Eastern States’ large student constituency is a singularly unambiguous future around which our Section has rallied for many years. As an ESSCI board member, my efforts will be to grow the Section’s sustained investments in our current and future students. I will advocate for opportunities that augment Combustion’s perennial technical rigor and transferrable technical skills with speakers addressing topics de rigueur and workshops focusing on broader skillsets. Our students will transit through industry, academia, government, or otherwise by a path most likely not exclusive to combustion. I will work to ensure Eastern States provides value-added perspectives to fuel our students’ respective career journeys.