James J. Riley
Professor and Acting Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Washington

James J. Riley received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1971, having worked under the guidance of Stanley Corrsin on the topic of turbulent flow. After a year as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and then as a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory, he spent ten years at Flow Research Company, in Kent, Washington, ultimately as Director of the Fluid Mechanics Division. He joined the University of Washington in 1983, where he is now a Professor and Acting Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and an Adjunct Professor of Applied Mathematics. On sabbatical in 1989 he occupied the Industrial Mathematics Chair at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. His research interests have included particle dispersion in turbulent flows, waves and turbulence in stably-stratified and in rotating fluids, boundary layer and shear layer transition, fluid/compliant surface interactions, and chemically-reacting turbulent flows. Professor Riley is a Battelle Senior Scientific Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and past chair of its Division of Fluid Dynamics.