Professor David Zingg was named Turnbull Lecturer for 2015 in recognition of his wide-ranging contributions to sustainable aviation. His lecture was entitled Toward Sustainable Aviation: Exploratory Aerodynamic Shape Optimization.
David Zingg has been a Professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) for the past 28 years and has been the Director since 2006. His research areas include aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, aerodynamic shape optimization, and aerostructural optimization. His current research is focused on applying high-fidelity aerodynamic shape optimization and aerostructural optimization to the design of novel aircraft configurations motivated by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft.
Together with colleagues from NASA, he is a co-author of the textbooks Fundamentals of Computational Fluid Dynamics, published by Springer in 2001, and Fundamental Algorithms in Computational Fluid Dynamics, published by Springer in 2014. Dr. Zingg has held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Computational Aerodynamics and Environmentally Friendly Aircraft Design from 2001 to 2015. He was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004, has held the J. Armand Bombardier Foundation Chair in Aerospace Flight since 2009, is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, was awarded the OSPE/PEO Engineering Medal in Research and Development in 2011.
Dr. Zingg was the recipient of the CASI McCurdy Award in 2013. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Green Aviation Research and Development Network (GARDN), which brings together government, academic, and industrial partners to foster the development of technologies to reduce aircraft noise and emissions.
Dr. Zingg’s graduate students hold senior positions throughout the Canadian aerospace industry.