Six new faculty members have joined the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering starting in the fall 2026 semester, bringing with them a range of expertise in various areas. Four will be located at the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus, and two will be located at the UT Space Institute in Tullahoma.
Laurent Capolungo
ME Professor
Capolungo is an award-winning researcher with a focus on structural mechanics modeling of materials under extreme environments. He joins UT after spending the last 10 years as a scientist and team leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he built a large research group with annual expenditures of more than $10 million. Prior to moving to LANL, Capolungowas an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from ENSIETA in France, and his master’s degree in materials science from the Universite de Bretagne in France. He obtained two PhDs in mechanical engineering from the Universite de Lorraine in 2006 and from Georgia Tech in 2007.
“I am very excited to join the UT faculty. I think the university is doing a great job investing in science and technology. There’s a lot of large-scale initiatives that are attractive to me. Everyone I met with at UT is in unison about the strategy to increase the impact of the university at a national level. I could tell the management team has a vision that is aligned and that’sappealing.”
Jennifer Colborn
AE Assistant Professor/UT Space Institute
Colborn joins UTSI after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where her research focused on non-intrusive diagnostics and data analysis in hypersonic environments. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and her master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Dayton. Colborn earned her PhD in mechanical engineering from Penn State University, studying heat transfer in reacting flows with a particular emphasis on radiation in gas turbine engines. At UTSI, she will continue advancing measurement and diagnostic techniques for complex flow environments.
“I am excited to join UT and continue providing meaningful measurements and insights into complex flow environments while educating and supporting students. I look forward to expanding my research, mentoring students, and contributing to the development of future flight systems.”
Boris Leonov
AE Assistant Professor/ UTSI
Leonov joins the MAE department from Texas A&M University, where he served as a research assistant professor. He received his PhD from Texas A&M and his bachelor’s degree from Purdue University, both in aerospace engineering. Leonov has received a few prestigious federal awards, such as the Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP) award in 2024 and the SMART scholarship in 2020. In his current research, he focuses on developing and implementing novel laser-based diagnostics to study aerothermochemistry in reacting and hypersonic flows. A particular emphasis of Leonov’s research is on understanding and ultimately controlling the complex phenomena that occur in high-speed flow regimes, such as formation and dissociation of species, material degradation through ablation, and boundary layer transition.
“Following a famous quote from Galileo Galilei, who said that the ‘essence of science is to measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so,’ I am excited to join the UTSI/UT team and strive for academic excellence. I am curious what new things, illuminated by the cutting-edge diagnostic methods, we will discover and learn tomorrow.”
Gao Jun Wu
AE Assistant Professor
Wu joins UT after completing his postdoctoral research at the Center for Naval Research & Education at the University of Michigan. He earned his PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University. Wu’s research focuses on computational fluid dynamics, aeroacoustics, and data assimilation. He uses high-fidelity numerical methods to investigate flows in aerospace and naval systems and develops techniques that integrate time-resolved simulations with experimental measurements. His work spans supersonic propulsion, vortex dynamics, and flow-generated noise.
“I am excited to join UT and build a collaborative research group that advances data-informed computational fluid mechanics while mentoring students to become rigorous, creative, and independent problem solvers.”
Anthony Minutolo
Teaching Associate Professor
Minutolo joins the department after spending the last year working in the Tickle College of Engineering’s engage Engineering Fundamentals Program. In the spring, he received the Dr. Richard Bennett EF Instructional Faculty Award. Prior to joining UT, Minutolo served as a tenured associate professor and program director in engineering at Lee University. Minutolo earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UT in chemical engineering. He was a Gann Teaching Fellow recipient.
Lance Curtis
Lecturer
Curtis joins UT from the University of Maryland, where he is completing his PhD in Reliability Engineering. Curtis also served as an adjunct professor at Howard Community College. Prior to that, he worked in industry as a materials engineer for The M&P Lab conducting metallurgical evaluations and failure analyses and as a reliability engineer modeling gas turbines for electrical power production at GE Power. Curtis earned his bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering and his master’s in mechanical engineering from the University of Idaho in 2001 and 2003, respectively. His research interests primarily center around the entropic characterization of failure mechanisms, particularly fatigue in metals, as well as metallurgical/mechanical failure analysis; modeling damage accumulation, reliability, resilience, and uncertainty; and engineering education.
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey ([email protected])