Firdaus Udwadia, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the Viterbi School, has been named the winner of the 2008 Richard R. Torrens Award of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Firdaus Udwadia

The Torrens Award is given for “outstanding contributions as a journal editor.” Udwadia has served as editor-in-chief of the ASCE’s highly respected Journal of Aerospace Engineering for the past seven years. The journal promotes the implementation and development of space and aerospace technologies and their transfer to other civil engineering applications. Topics of interest include aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, wind tunnel testing of buildings and structures, aerospace structures and materials, advanced composite materials, dynamics and control, real-time data acquisition, space engineering and construction, lunar base construction, field and remote sensing, and robotics.

Udwadia had previously won the Outstanding Technical Contribution Award for 2006 of the ASCE’s Aerospace Division.