Professor Geno Pawlak received his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of California San Diego. He then spent three years at University of Washington before joining the staff here at the University of Hawaii in the Ocean and Resources Engineering Department. His current teaching load rotates between Oceanography for Ocean Engineers, Near Shore Processes and Sediment Transport, Ocean Engineering Lab (now ongoing), and Environmental Fluid Dynamics.
He currently advises six graduate students and one undergraduate student. They study flow over rough boundaries, for example, over the ocean floor. The current challenge in his field is the flow over inhomogeneous boundaries, like flows over coral reefs, typical of the Hawaiian Islands region. With flows over coral reefs, there is a broad spectrum of scales, which are highly variable in space. Prof. Pawlak and his team observe the effects of varying scales in the laboratory, in the field, and through numerical modeling. Since quite a bit of the research they do is experimental, or involves field observations on the ocean floor, most of the graduate students and staff are also UH certified scientific divers. The Ocean Engineering Lab students also spend part of their lab on the ocean floor.
Along with his student Krishnakumar Rajagopalan, Prof. Pawlak has been working on numerical modeling of the boundary layer flows over the ocean floor using MHPCC for about five years. You can see details of that work in his 2006 Engagement Grant report. The numerical results are compared to both flume results in the lab and field results, measured using permanent instrumentation, like that at Kilo Nalu off the South Shore of Oahu. Installing and maintaining permanent instrumentation in the ocean environment poses unique challenges with respect to corrosion, biofouling, calibration, etc., requiring rugged materials and construction. Kilo Nalu staff also need to service the instruments on a regular basis. To find out more about Prof. Pawlak's work, contact him directly or go to his web page at http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/OE/pawlak/index.html
