At Stanford University, Prof. Alonso is the Vance D. and Arlene C. Coffman Professor and the James and Anna Marie Spilker Chair of the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. Prof. Alonso is also the founder and director of the Aerospace Design Laboratory (ADL) where he specializes in the development of high-fidelity computational analysis and design methodologies to enable the creation of realizable and efficient aerospace systems. He is the author of over 300 technical publications on the topics of computational aircraft and spacecraft design, multi-disciplinary optimization, fundamental numerical methods, and high-performance parallel computing. During the period spanning 2006-09, Prof. Alonso was the Director of the NASA Fundamental Aeronautics Program in Washington, DC. In that position he was responsible for the entire portfolio of aerospace vehicle and vehicle technology research for the agency in the subsonic rotary wing, subsonic fixed wing, supersonic, and hypersonic regimes, with particular emphasis on the energy and fuel efficiency of the aviation enterprise and its environmental impact.
Prof. Alonso is the recipient of several AIAA Best Paper Awards, the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal, the NASA ARMD Associate Administrator Award, and the AIAA Stanford Chapter Professor of the Year award. Prof. Alonso has served in the NASA Advisory Council, the Secretary of Transportation’s Future of Aviation Advisory Committee, the FAA Administrator’s Management Advisory Council, and as an Independent Expert in the ICAO/CAEP fuel burn, noise, and emissions technology goals evaluation. Prof. Alonso is a fellow of the AIAA and earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and his B.S. degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Prof. Alonso is also the CTO and co-founder of Luminary.ai, a startup company focused on leveraging GPU computing, cloud-based resources and infrastructure, and Physics AI modeling to revolutionize simulation-based analysis and design of engineered products, focusing on applications in aerospace, defense, and automotive industries.