Belen Bowman (nee Veras-Alba)

Pennsylvania State University

Belen Veras-Alba is a doctoral student at the Pennsylvania State University's Department of Aerospace Engineering. She received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Penn State in 2015. In summer 2017, Belen received the highly competitive National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, which is annually awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense to U.S. citizens and nationals pursuing a PhD degree in one of the 15 designated disciplines, including astronautical and aeronautical engineering.

Since 2014, Belen has served various officer positions on the VFS PSU Chapter, and helped organize the PSU Rotor Day, an annual aviation and aerospace themed STEM outreach event for K-12 students in the community.

What are some of your current projects or research interests?

"My current research, supervised by Professor Jose Palacios, uses computational fluid dynamics to model the interaction between low-pressure compression fans and jet engine casings degraded by experimental ice build-up. This will aid in developing future design configuration with optimized ice protection systems. My earlier research focused on the study of deformation and breakup of supercooled large droplets to gain knowledge of the ice accretion chord-extent limits."