Dr. Alexander Smits is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. He is also the director of the Gas dynamics

Gas dynamics

Gas dynamics is a branch of fluid dynamics concerned with studying the motion of gases and its consequent effects. Gas dynamics combines the principles of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics...

 laboratory at Princeton. Smits' received his bachelor's of science in mechanical engineering from the University of Melbourne

University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...

, Australia in 1970. Subsequently he received his Ph.D. from Melbourne in 1975.

Smits is an expert in the areas of turbulence

Turbulence

In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is a flow regime characterized by chaotic and stochastic property changes. This includes low momentum diffusion, high momentum convection, and rapid variation of pressure and velocity in space and time...

 and fluid mechanics

Fluid mechanics

Fluid mechanics is the study of fluids and the forces on them. Fluid mechanics can be divided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest; fluid kinematics, the study of fluids in motion; and fluid dynamics, the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion...

, and is also the chief editor of Efluids.com, a website designed for students and researchers to share information about fluids. He is also currently an associate editor for the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and the Journal of Turbulence. Smits is the head of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Princeton University.