Rate My Professor Frank Lagor

Frank Lagor is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, joining the faculty in August 2023. His research centers on estimation and control for autonomous systems interacting with their fluid environments, encompassing areas such as unsteady aerodynamics and bio-inspired robotics. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, from 2017 to 2023. Lagor earned his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2017, with an emphasis on dynamics and control and a minor specialization in aerodynamics. He also received an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2015, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Villanova University in 2006. Prior to his graduate studies, he served at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company as a Certified Principal Engineer, developing solar array drive assemblies for commercial and non-classified satellite programs.

Lagor has been recognized with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Award in 2021 and the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Early Career Teacher of the Year award in 2020. His influential publications include "Information-based sensor placement for data-driven estimation of unsteady flows" by J. Graff, A. Medina, and F. D. Lagor (AIAA Journal, 2023); "Design of optimal wing maneuvers in a transverse gust encounter through iterated simulation or experiment" by X. Xu et al. (Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics, 2023); "Physics of gust response mitigation in open-loop pitching manoeuvres" by G. Sedky et al. (Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2022); "Reduced-order modeling for Dynamic Mode Decomposition without an arbitrary sparsity parameter" by J. Graff et al. (AIAA Journal, 2020); and "Distributed flow estimation and closed-loop control of an underwater vehicle with a multi-modal artificial lateral line" by L. Devries et al. (Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2015). These works have advanced understanding and applications in fluid-structure interactions and autonomous control systems.