Emeritus Professor Ian Castro

Ian Castro graduated from Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge before gaining an MSc and then a PhD at Imperial College while employed as the first Donald Campbell Research Fellow in the Department of Aeronautics. There followed six years as a Research Officer at Marchwood Engineering Laboratories, Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), after which he escaped back to academia, joining the University of Surrey in 1978 as the Academic Advancement Fund Research Fellow. Subsequent posts as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader led to appointment in 1990 as Professor of Fluid Dynamics. Between 1980 and 1996 regular working periods, ranging from 2-6 months, as Visiting Professor were spent at the US Environmental Protection Agency's Fluid Modelling Facility in North Carolina and NC State University, Raleigh. The 1990s saw large stratified flow rigs (a wind tunnel and towing tank - together unique in Europe) moved from the now-privatised CEGB Leatherhead, to the University of Surrey and on its official opening in 1993 he was appointed as (Founder-) Director of the National Power Environmental Flow Research Centre.

He moved to Southampton, taking the new Chair in Fluid Dynamics at the start of the new Millennium, January 2000, and has since served as Head of the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics Group and as Deputy Head of the School of Engineering Sciences. He is author of over 300 publications and has served on a number of national and international committees.

In March 2012 the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics group hosted a Symposium "From bent layers to broken waves: studies in engineering and environmental fluid dynamics", in honour of his 65th birthday.

Having formally retired in September 2010, he returned part-time in the same post for six years, before becoming Emeritus Professor in February 2017. He remains involved in some of the Aerodynamics & Flight Mechanics Research Group’s activities.