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Dr. Maddalena is the Director of the Aerodynamics Research Center and a Professor of Aerospace Engineering. He is responsible for research operations in its low-speed wind tunnel, transonic Ludwieg tube tunnel (0.4< M <1.25), supersonic blow-down tunnel (1.5< M <4), detonation-driven shock tunnel (6< M <16), and the 1.6 MW arc jet facility, as well as pulsed and continuous detonation wave engine test cells. He has received over $10M in external research funding as PI, including NASA LaRC (Hypervelocity Propulsion, Mach 8+), the Office of Naval Research for his contribution to the Strike Weapon Program and Arc-Jet Development and Flow Characterization, the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO) on directed energy radiation for hypersonic applications, the Department of Energy on cold plasma, the Air Force Research Laboratory on the Next Generation Thermal Protection Systems Program, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Prof. Maddalena is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He served as Chair of the AIAA's Hypersonic Technologies and Aerospace Planes (HyTASP) Technical Committee and presently serves as Deputy Director for Aircraft Technologies within the AIAA's Aircraft Technology, Integration and Operations Group. He is the recipient of the 2023 AIAA Ground Testing Award for ‘pioneering contributions in the development of arc-heated facilities, advanced optical diagnostics and data processing’.
Prof. Luca Maddalena has received his laurea degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy, and his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Virginia Tech. Prior to joining the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) faculty, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT).
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