Spotlight_Jan2022

Member Spotlight – January 2022

Aslihan Vuruskan, Ph.D.

Initiated into the Zonta Club of St. Louis on April 2019
Membership Committee Member, 2019-2020
PR Committee Member, 2020-current
STEM Committee Member, 2021-current

In celebration of Amelia Earhart…. let us celebrate our very own Amelia Earhart Fellowship winner, Aslihan Vuruskan, Ph.D. Aslihan was a recipient of the prestigious Amelia Earhart Fellowship in 2017. The AE Fellowship is awarded annually to 35 women all around the world pursing a Ph.D. in the field of aerospace-related sciences or aerospace-related engineering with a superior academic record. Through this recognition, the St. Louis Club gained a friend and club member.

When I asked Aslihan for some fun facts about herself, I was surprised by what I learned. Did you know that Aslihan was a professional tennis player up until the age of 16? She placed 2nd among high school tennis players in the Kansas State Tournament in 2007. She was a foreign exchange student at the time.

Another fun fact… Aslihan got married in Florida last March 2021. She assures me that her husband knows all about Zonta and is supportive of her involvement.

Aslihan enjoys playing tennis (of course), doing pilates, building static aircraft models and house models, solving puzzles and reading books/science magazines. She is also an experienced traveler and enjoys visiting different places and experiencing different cultures. She has traveled to France, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Poland, and England and also visited several cities across the US.

Aslihan earned her Bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering in 2012 and Mechanical Engineering in 2013 from Istanbul Technical University. In 2014 she completed her Masters in Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering at the same university. In 2020 she earned her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology where she was a graduate research and teaching assistant. Dr. Aslihan Vuruskan is currently an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at Florida Polytechnic University.

Her research activities focus on robust aerodynamic shape optimization, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), uncertainty quantification (UQ), aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, and numerical methods. The objective of her research is to combine efficient uncertainty quantification methods and aerodynamic shape optimization to improve the performance of aerospace systems. Her research motivation is also to reduce the computational time and cost in the optimization process to improve the efficiency of robust systems.

She is currently serving as a representative of Florida Poly on the NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium Advisory Board.

Of note, Aslihan also received the AIAA Young Professional Award given by St. Louis Section of AIAA in 2019.

We are so happy to have Aslihan as a productive member in our club.