Rate My Professor Tobias Hermann

Tobias Hermann is an Associate Professor in Engineering at the University of Oxford, serving as a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Associate Research Fellow at St Hilda’s College in the Department of Engineering Science, Oxford Thermofluids Institute. He earned his Dipl.-Ing. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Stuttgart in 2012 and his Dr.-Ing. degree in 2017 from the same university. His doctoral thesis investigated aerothermochemistry phenomena during spacecraft re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, emphasizing the interaction between radiating gas and ablating material. For this, he developed optical diagnostic methods, including Vacuum Ultraviolet spectroscopy systems, tomographic emission spectrographs, and radiometric measurement devices.

Since 2017, Hermann has worked in the Oxford Hypersonics group at the Oxford Thermofluids Institute, starting as a Postdoctoral Researcher, advancing to Senior Research Associate in 2019, and promoted to Associate Professor in May 2025. He taught undergraduate Engineering Science at St Catherine’s College from 2018 to 2019 and at St Hilda’s College from 2019 to 2023. His research centers on experimental hypersonics and plasma flows, optical diagnostics, spacecraft re-entry, high-temperature material-flow interactions, wind tunnel development, instrumentation, and analytical methods for heat and mass transfer. He pioneered analytical models for porous media heat transfer, transpiration-cooled wind-tunnel experiments, and diagnostics like heat flux measurements in porous media, total temperature probes, pressure-sensitive paint, and high-speed Schlieren systems. Current projects include developing high-enthalpy wind tunnels using plasma flows and short-duration facilities, pre-heating hypersonic models with arc-jets in expansion tubes, and advanced techniques such as Vacuum Ultraviolet emission spectroscopy and laser absorption spectroscopy. Key publications encompass “Performance of Transpiration-Cooled Heat Shields for Reentry Vehicles” (2019), “Analytical Solution of Flows in Porous Media for Transpiration Cooling Applications” (2021), “Numerical Simulation of Transpiration Cooling in a Laminar Hypersonic Boundary Layer” (2022), “Development and flow characterization of the Oxford small-scale thermal arcjet facility” (2026), and “Unsteady mass transport through dissociated non-equilibrium stagnation-point boundary layers” (2025). Through his UKRI fellowship, he leads plasma tunnel advancements pivotal to hypersonic research.