How to study high-speed flows

Joanna Austin (MS '98, PhD '03) does not just go with the flow. She picks it apart and analyzes it. One of the newest faculty members in Caltech's Division of Engineering and Applied Science is a gas dynamicist, Austin studies the mechanics involved in compressible flows, those where gases reach such high speeds that the density of a fluid element changes drastically. These flows come into play in problems ranging from the logistics of a spacecraft's entry into a planet's atmosphere to the hows ...