The Department of Mechanical & Nuclear Engineering Welcomes New Department Head, Dr. Karen A. Thole

The Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering welcomes Dr. Karen A. Thole as their new Department Head. She replaces Dr. H. Joseph Sommer III who served as Interim Department Head from July 1, 2005 through July 31, 2006. Dr. Thole comes to us from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University where she held the title of William S. Cross Professor of Mechanical Engineering. 

Dr. Thole holds two degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin. After receiving her Ph.D., she spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Thermal Turbomachinery at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. Her academic career began in 1994 when she became an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. In 1999, she accepted a position in the mechanical engineering department at Virginia Tech, where she was promoted to professor in 2003. For the past two years, she served there as the assistant department head of the mechanical engineering department.

Dr. Thole’s areas of expertise are heat transfer and fluid mechanics specializing in turbulent boundary layers, convection heat transfer, and high freestream turbulence effects. Dr. Thole has been solely responsible for attracting funding of more than $5 million from such agencies as the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Air Force, United Technologies Corporation—Pratt & Whitney, Solar Turbines, Modine Manufacturing, and Siemens-Westinghouse. She has co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and advised on more than thirty-fi ve graduate theses. She is an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Dr. Thole’s award history includes a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. She has been named a College of Engineering Faculty Fellow at Virginia Tech and an American Society of Mechanical Engineering Fellow. She was recently inducted into the Mechanical Engineering Distinguished Alumni Academy at The University of Texas. For her work in transforming the institution through an NSF Advance Award at Virginia Tech, she was named an AdvanceVT Professor.

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Thole to the deparment!