Charles Westbrook, CI President (2008-2012), Prof. Thierry Poinsot, and Katharina Kohse-Höinghaus, CI President (2012-2016), at the 36th International Symposium on Combustion in Seoul, Korea
In this third installment of a seven-part series of articles, The Combustion Institute recognizes combustion scientists who were honored with medals and awards during the 36th International Symposium on Combustion. Thierry Poinsot is the 2016 recipient of the Ya. B. Zeldovich Gold Medal, for outstanding contributions to the theory of turbulent combustion and combustion dynamics, particularly for influential developments of DNS and LES and their combustion applications.
Prof. Thierry Poinsot is a Research Director of the Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse (CNRS and Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse), France. He is also the leader of the CFD team at CERFACS (Center for Research and Formation for Advanced Scientific Computation), France. A worldwide consultant in great demand, he also spends most summers at the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford University, United States.
Prof. Poinsot completed his Ph.D. in 1983 and Thèse d’État in 1987 under the supervision of Prof. Sébastien Candel, at the École Centrale Paris, France. He was a postdoc at Stanford University for two years before moving to Toulouse.
Since 1992, Prof. Poinsot has been a leading researcher in computational turbulent fluid mechanics applied to reacting flows. In particular, he has led the advances in turbulence simulations for combustion through LES and DNS, publishing highly acclaimed and cited papers. His work has significant impacts on aeronautical propulsion, automotive engines, and gas turbines.
Prof. Poinsot is the co-author of the leading book, Theoretical and Numerical Combustion. He is also an Associate Editor of Combustion and Flame. He served as program committee co-chair of the 35th International Symposium on Combustion in San Francisco, CA, United States. He delivered a plenary lecture at the 26th Symposium in Naples, Italy. This year, he presents the Hottel lecture.
In 1993, Prof. Poinsot was the first recipient of the Cray Prize for Scientific Computing. He was awarded the Edmond Brun Prize of the Académie des Sciences in 1996 for Fluid Mechanics, and the Grand Prix de l’Académie des Sciences, Paris in 2003. Since 2009, he has been recognized with the Prime d’excellence scientifique of CNRS. In 2012, he received an advanced grant from the ERC (European Research Council), to work on combustion instabilities.
Please join The Combustion Institute in congratulating Prof. Poinsot and the other honored 2016 award winners in the international combustion community. Questions regarding awards may be directed to: Office@CombustionInstitute.org.