People

Dr. Arindam Banerjee is the Paul. B Reinhold Endowed Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics at Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA). He is also the founding co-director of the Atlantic Marine Energy Center, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded research center located on the U.S. East Coast, which focuses on developing and accelerating marine energy converters for powering the blue economy. Prof. Banerjee received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University (2006) and is an international expert in experimental and computational fluid dynamics. His current research interests include multiscale thermo-fluid dynamics, with an emphasis on energy and biological systems. Ongoing research thrusts include marine renewable energy (river, tidal, wave, and offshore wind energy harvesting) with an emphasis on the energy-water nexus; fluid dynamics in extreme environments (hydrodynamic instabilities in inertial confinement fusion); and computational pulmonary therapeutics (drug delivery in human lungs under various mechanical ventilation conditions). His research efforts have secured over $25 million of competitive federal funding from various agencies. Prof. Banerjee was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2021. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal publications, conference papers, abstracts and book chapters. Prof. Banerjee is a Subject (Associate) Editor of Renewable Energy (Elsevier, Impact Factor: 9.0) and handles the offshore energy portfolio of the journal. Prof. Banerjee has been a research leader across Lehigh University for various initiatives, including the Rossin College Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRIs) Envisioning Committee, which led to the formation of the three IRIs. He has been an active member of the Leadership Council of the Institute of Cyberphysical Infrastructure and Energy, where he has played a leading role in developing research thrust areas in the blue economy and marine energy, resulting in several successful large grants (over $20 million in funding). At Lehigh, Prof. Banerjee is also a leader in pedagogical innovation and has spearheaded graduate curriculum changes in MEM which led to streamlining of the MEM Master of Science Program and a complete restructuring of the MEM Ph.D. program. Very recently, Prof. Banerjee teamed up with Prof. Shalinee Kishore (ECE, Lehigh) and faculty across four Lehigh colleges to successfully secure a U.S. National Science Foundation National Research Traineeship funding to initiate an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program on Solutions in Energy, Electrification and Delivery (SEED-EF) that looks into integrating a policy driven approach in engineering problem solving.