John Dabiri Awarded National Medal of Science

John O. Dabiri (PhD '05), Caltech's Centennial Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has been honored by the Biden White House with the National Medal of Science, the country's highest honor for exemplary achievement and leadership in science and engineering.

In a ceremony held at the White House on January 3, Dabiri received his award from Arati Prabhakar (PhD '85), director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In total, Prabhakar presented 14 people with the National Medal of Science, including Caltech alumnus R. Lawrence "Larry" Edwards (PhD '88). At the same ceremony, nine individuals, including former JPL engineer Eric Fossum, as well as two organizations, were awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

In an official release, the White House said, "Those who earn these awards embody the promise of America by pushing the boundaries of what is possible. These trailblazers have harnessed the power of science and technology to tackle challenging problems and deliver innovative solutions for Americans and for communities around the world."

Dabiri was honored "for achievements in aeronautical and biological engineering." His award citation noted that "Dabiri's work on biological fluid dynamics, turbulence, and biological propulsion has advanced our clean energy future—leading to more efficient wind turbines and wind farms that make our world cleaner, safer, and more sustainable for future generations."

"This honor is really a recognition of 20 years of students and postdocs with whom I've been fortunate to work on a variety of projects in my lab," Dabiri says. "Many of them explored ideas that were a bit unorthodox at the time. In a lot of cases, they didn't pan out the way we had originally expected, but we learned a lot along the way. My wish is that this recognition is encouragement for them and me to continue pursuing unconventional ideas despite inevitable failures along the way. And hopefully our best work is still ahead of us."

Dabiri is known for his innovative approach in using fluid dynamics and bioinspired ideas to tackle engineering problems, with a special emphasis on applications related to energy and the environment. For example, in one project, Dabiri became interested in strategies through which schooling fish adapt to the turbulent wakes created by each individual fish by synchronizing their movements as a group. He wondered if such strategies might suggest a better way to design wind farms. Since individual wind turbines create choppy air that reduces the performance of neighboring turbines, wind farms traditionally spread turbines out as far as possible and therefore require more land. But the behaviors of schooling fish, and even competitive bicyclists, show that a group can outperform individuals in isolation. And, indeed, over the course of about a decade on a field site an hour north of Caltech, Dabiri's group demonstrated that placing vertical-axis wind turbines closely together—in a strategic formation—profoundly improves their energy-generating efficiency.

"That's the type of project that I feel like really only happens at a place like Caltech," Dabiri says. "I remember going to the division chair at the time, Ares Rosakis, and asking him whether we could buy some land to build a wind farm and study these turbines. He asked about the scientific purpose and within the same meeting said, ‘Sure, go for it!' That ability to try something really unorthodox is, to me, quintessentially Caltech, and without that field demonstration, I think it would have been hard to convince people that this idea had merit."

Dabiri's group later showed that similar principles can also be applied to conventional horizontal-axis wind turbines by "steering" their wakes. His work has touched on other areas ranging from earlier detection of heart disease to monitoring the health of the oceans using biohybrid robotic jellyfish.

In addition to his work within academia, Dabiri has served in a number of leadership positions in science. He is an active member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board; a member of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Board of Trustees; and he is on the board of directors of tech giant NVIDIA. He has previously served on the National Academies Committee on Science, Technology, and Law, and as chair of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics.

Dabiri has been honored with numerous awards including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.

Additional Caltech Awardees

Eric Fossum, the John H. Krehbiel Sr. Professor for Emerging Technologies at Dartmouth College, was honored with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his invention of the complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS ) active pixel image sensor, or "camera-on-a-chip." Fossum developed the CMOS active pixel sensor while a senior research scientist and technical assistant section manager at JPL in the 1990s. The innovation is widely used today in cell phone cameras, webcams, and medical imaging devices.

Caltech alumnus Larry Edwards, the Regents and Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota, received the National Medal of Science for his work improving radiocarbon dating techniques for the study of historical climate change and ocean chemistry.

Established by Congress in 1959, the National Medal of Science is administered by the NSF and given to "those deserving special recognition for their outstanding contributions to science in service to the United States." The National Medal of Technology and Innovation was established by Congress in 1980 and is administered by the US Patent and Trademark Office. According to the White House, it recognizes "American innovators whose vision, intellect, creativity, and determination have strengthened America's economy and improved our quality of life."

Dabiri and Edwards join 66 other Caltech faculty, alumni, and former postdocs and researchers, living and dead, who have won the National Medal of Science. Fossum joins 14 others who have won the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.