Rate My Professor P. S. Ayyaswamy

Portonovo S. Ayyaswamy, known as P. S. Ayyaswamy, serves as the Asa Whitney Professor of Dynamical Engineering (Emeritus) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science. He holds a Distinguished Adjunct Professor position in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. Ayyaswamy earned his B.E. from the University of Mysore in 1962, M.S. in 1965 and M.E. in 1967 from Columbia University, and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1971, with a thesis on natural convection flows in tilted configurations under advisor Ivan Catton. He joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1974 as Assistant Professor, advancing to Associate Professor in 1980, Professor in 1987, and the Asa Whitney Chair in 1996. He chaired Graduate Affairs from 1990 to 1996 and 2004 to 2006, and Undergraduate Affairs from 1984 to 1986. His research focuses on transport phenomena, including multiphase flows and phase-change heat and mass transfer with drops and bubbles, bio-heat and mass transfer, nanoparticle transport for targeted drug delivery, plasma arc heat transfer, arterial gas embolism modeling, and cell culturing in simulated microgravity.

Ayyaswamy co-authored the influential book Transport Phenomena with Drops and Bubbles (Springer, 1997, with S. S. Sadhal and J. N. Chung). Key publications include Modeling of Supercritical CO2 Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers under extreme conditions. Part II: Heat Exchanger Model (ASME Journal of Heat Transfer, 2022), Thermodynamic experiments on a supercritical carbon dioxide – air microtube heat exchanger (International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 2023), and Nanoparticle transport phenomena in confined flows (Advances in Heat Transfer, 2019). He received major awards such as ASME Honorary Member (2018), Max Jakob Memorial Award (2014), ASME 75th Anniversary Medal (2013), Worcester Reed Warner Medal (2007), ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award (2005), and ASME Fellow (1990). Ayyaswamy served as Editor-in-Chief of the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer (2016-2023), Associate Technical Editor (1997-2004), and participated in numerous NASA and NSF review panels. A symposium honoring his contributions was held at Penn in 2018.