Michael Wadas Named Recipient of 2025 Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award

Wadas’s dissertation, Hydrodynamics of Shocked Interfaces, conducted under the mentorship of Eric Johnsen, associate director of MICDE and professor of mechanical engineering, uncovers how shock waves interacting with density-stratified fluids generate self-propelling vortex rings and explores how these structures scale and destabilize under extreme conditions. His work explains long-observed but poorly understood phenomena in two high-impact domains: inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and supernova hydrodynamics.

Using a combination of theory, high-fidelity computation and experiment-informed modeling, Wadas has uncovered new physical mechanisms that govern how shock-accelerated interfaces behave and generate vortex structures. He demonstrated a technique for strengthening shock waves in dynamic-compression experiments. He also established a predictive scaling framework that shows how interfacial protrusions invert and shed self-propelling vortex rings, thus extending classical vortex-ring theory into compressible, variable-density regimes relevant to fusion capsules and astrophysical flows. His work further revealed how related vortex structures can destabilize due to vortex-core instability, offering a compelling hydrodynamic explanation for the “string-of-pearls” clumping observed in Supernova 1987A. Together, these advances provide scaling laws and stability predictions that enable far more predictive control of shock-driven mixing, a long-standing challenge in high-energy-density environments.

A distinctive theme of his work is the role of computation as a discovery engine. Wadas noted, “There is really no understanding like that which comes from observing something with one’s own eyes, making an approachable computational environment one of the most powerful learning tools.”