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Matthew Schwartz has earned a reputation—and several speaking awards—as a great speaker and presenter during his time at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. Earlier this month, the graduate research assistant won first place during the AIAA International Student Competition at the annual AIAA Sci-Tech Convention in San Diego, California.

This was a follow-up competition to a regional AIAA Student Competition that he won in April 2018. The title of this presentation was, “Characterization of Near – Muzzle Ballistic Flow fields using High-speed Shadowgraphy.”

“We have developed a direct shadowgraph setup to study ballistic flowfields,” said Schwartz. “I talked about some of the results and how this optical technique can be used to gather quantitative measurements. I am incredibly thrilled by this win.”

The Nashville native works on the computational fluid dynamics team in the HORIZON Research group at UTSI under Professor John Schmisseur, focusing on high-speed aerodynamics.

“I have the absolute best research group, and the students and professors within this group could not have been more helpful in my preparation or more proud and supportive of my win,” said Schwartz. “Our group is a relatively young research team, and the Space Institute is not as well-known as many other universities out there, but I believe this proves that we are able to produce world class research. We are excited to see how this group progresses.”

In October 2018, Schwartz also won first place in the in at the AIAA Next Generation Technical Symposium, which took place in October 2018 in Huntsville, Alabama. His award was for best speaker in the “Aerodynamics and Aeroacoustics” session for his paper “Numerical Investigation on Effects of Reynolds Number on Crossing Shock-Wave/Turbulent Boundary-Layer Interactions.”

Schwartz is earning his Master’s Degree in aerospace engineering and plans to take an internship at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base after graduation.