"Diligence is the best guarantee of success," he wrote. Today, the internationally recognized Professor Krishan Ahuja still adheres to that philosophy. It has guided him through many doors of opportunity that have "luckily" opened for him.
Ahuja is a Regents Researcher and Georgia Institute of Technology professor of aerospace engineering, who studies aeroacoustics at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. His distinguished career began in 1965, just after high school, when the first of many doors to opportunity opened to him with an unexpected and prestigious five-year apprenticeship at aeroengine maker Rolls Royce in Derby, England. From there, one door after another opened, and life pleasantly greeted him as he entered.
"I didn't know what to expect," Ahuja recalls about his Rolls Royce apprenticeship. "Everything happened so fast.... I was from a middle-class family with hard-working parents. This was a dream come true for very rich people. But I believed then and now that if you enjoy what you're doing and are sincere, everything will work out. And everything has led to something else just right for me. I consider myself one of the very lucky people in the world. It has been absolutely incredible how everything has just fallen into place for me."
As a young student in India, Ahuja was a "bookworm," and he loved to write science-related essays. He entered numerous essay competitions. Later, these experiences proved useful.
"I saw an ad asking for applications for the apprenticeship at Rolls Royce, and I applied," he recalls. "I had no idea what it was all about.... I was invited to Delhi to take an entrance exam.
photo by Gary Meek
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Ahuja's students – from undergraduates to doctoral degree candidates and postdoctoral fellows – actively participate in research projects in his lab. Ahuja says he is able to accomplish so much work with students because they are ready to learn and willing to take directions. Left to right in the front are Scott Munro, Tomoyuki Minami, Ahuja and Patrick McPherson. On the back row are Richard Gaeta and Michael Parsons.
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The questions they asked, I knew the answers to them exactly. One of the questions was about wood joints, for example, and I was very interested in carpentry then and had read about it. They also asked me to write an essay on space research, and just a year before I had written an essay on space research for another contest."
Soon thereafter, Rolls Royce awarded an apprenticeship to Ahuja. He arrived there – with the requirement of bringing his own knife and fork for the cafeteria – and began extensive formal training in various departments, including the machine shop, the foundries, design drafting and a range of laboratories.
The training also included classroom instruction, though it was not intended to prepare apprentices for a university education. But Ahuja enrolled anyway and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical and aeronautical engineering from the University of London. Aeroacoustics captured his interest when Rolls Royce assigned him to the noise department in the final year of his apprenticeship. Meanwhile, he began conducting his master's research at the National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE) outside London.
"Again, I was very lucky," Ahuja recalls. "There was great interest in jet exhaust noise research at the time. My experiments were among the first to get good, clean jet noise data.... I had some good help and the backing of Rolls Royce, one of the best aeroengine companies in the world. My data was used a lot in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. General Electric and Lockheed used it, in fact, so I was already known to the aeroacoustics community when I came to the U.S. in 1972."
The move to the United States was another unplanned step. After completing his master's degree, Ahuja spent a year conducting research at the prestigious Institute for Sound and Vibration Research in Southampton. There, he met a Syracuse University professor, Darshan S. Dosanjh, who had a U.S. Department of Transportation grant to develop a jet noise research facility. He invited Ahuja to conduct research there, and Ahuja, thinking the facility was ready, agreed to go.
"When we got there, Dr. Dosanjh showed me an open piece of land filled with snow," Ahuja recalls. "It turned out to be a boon in disguise. He was a good mentor, had a large grant and gave me full freedom to help design the facility from scratch. It was painful, but I learned a lot."
At Syracuse, Ahuja helped design an anechoic chamber, a reverberation chamber and a hot jet facility to study ways of controlling jet noise. Meanwhile, he worked on his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.
Pennsylvania State University recently acquired the hot jet facility that Ahuja designed at Syracuse. One of Ahuja's long-time colleagues, Dennis McLaughlin, chairman of the aerospace engineering department at Penn State, says: "The more I looked over the facility, the more I was amazed at the quality of the engineering Krish performed as a student. This development job was clearly an outstanding achievement, well beyond what might be expected even for an established researcher. Now I better understand why Krish has had such a successful career as a professional."
At Syracuse, he met Philippa Maister, the woman who became his wife; she was at the university on a student visa from South Africa to earn a master's degree in economics.
"I hadn't planned any of this," Ahuja recalls. "One thing just led to another."
After finishing his Ph.D. in 1976, Ahuja was offered aeroacoustics research positions at Lockheed, Stanford University and NASA-Langley. It seemed that a career in the United States was almost inevitable.
"I had married a white South African woman, and because of apartheid, we could not move to South Africa," Ahuja explains. "And it would have been awkward to return to India. So we decided to stay in the United States, and I chose the position at Lockheed because they were the first to offer to get permanent residency for me."
So Ahuja began at Lockheed in Smyrna, just northeast of Atlanta, as a full-time consultant to study new aspects of jet noise. Eventually, he became head of the aeroacoustics research program and acting manager of the Advanced Flight Sciences Department. Ahuja became an American citizen in the early 1980s after he was told that as a foreign national, he was not allowed to read some of the published research reports he had written at Lockheed for studies funded by NASA and the U.S. Air Force.
Ahuja worked at Lockheed until 1989, when the company decided to move its research operations to California. Atlanta was home by now to Ahuja, his freelance writer wife and two daughters, and none of them wanted to leave. Again, things worked out for him.
Though he left Lockheed, Ahuja was able to keep the same office and, most importantly, his laboratory. He suggested to the administration of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) that they ask Lockheed to donate its Smyrna facilities to GTRI.
photo by Gary Meek
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When he can make the time, Ahuja loves to sculpt. "Sculpting does something to me," he says. "For some people, it's music or flowers. But wherever I go, I find sculpture to look at." This figure titled "Peace" is one of Ahuja's sculptures.
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With Ahuja's help, GTRI worked out a deal with Lockheed. Subsequently, GTRI hired Ahuja as a senior faculty research leader, and Georgia Tech made him a professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering. Also, GTRI gave funds to Ahuja to start an aeroacoustics research program.
"I am one of the few who has luckily stayed in the same field for a long time now," Ahuja says. "I've been in aeroacoustics since I was in Derby at Rolls Royce."
In aeroacoustics, Ahuja primarily deals with control and understanding of noise from anything that moves or has flow around it. Because of that, he does a lot of work on flow control. His related research interests are jet noise, design of quiet wind tunnels and engine test cells, thermoacoustics, advanced acoustic liners, community noise, automobile noise, the acoustic signatures of tornadoes (which could be used for improved weather forecasting) and the effects of noise on sleep. He has also developed an innovative noise-shielding prototype product called Quiet Curtains for use in nursing homes, schools and offices.
In his career, Ahuja has published more than 100 articles on noise in peer-reviewed journals. He also holds U.S. patents on three devices – one for a fluctuating pressure measuring apparatus, another for apparatuses and methods for sound absorption using hollow beads loosely contained in an enclosure, and a third for rapid charging of batteries using sound. The beads could be poured into existing structures – from the walls of homes, hotels and concert halls to the frameworks of aircraft and automobiles. In addition, Ahuja has six more patents pending award.
"Krish is the complete scientist," says Edward Reedy, director of GTRI. "He is thorough, passionate, intelligent and, most importantly of all for a scientist, always inquisitive. He is an example to all for his professionalism, interaction with students and contributions for the betterment of society. Krish is an asset to Georgia Tech and GTRI, and I am glad I had the good sense to hire him when presented the opportunity. We are proud to have him on the research faculty at GTRI and I, personally, am proud to call him my friend."
Through the years, Ahuja has received a number of offers to conduct research elsewhere, but he has always chosen to stay at GTRI.
"I think I have a personal bond with these facilities," he explains. "I took part in building them in 1976. They are very special, very unique. I love uniqueness. That is my personal criteria. Everything has to be unique in some way. These facilities helped me develop my expertise, and they 'sharpened my saw' in many ways. In my field, there are not many other places I could do this sort of research. GTRI is the only university in the United States that has an anechoic flight simulator with hot jet capability.
"And GTRI management has always supported me. I have had good opportunities here. They worked very hard to make me a Regents Researcher, to get me the professorship.... The confidence they have shown in me has kept me here," he adds.
GTRI has also kept Ahuja busy. At one time, he had 15 research projects under way simultaneously. "That's very tough," he says. "I don't have that many now. I couldn't have done that anywhere else. I did it here because of my students. Students are great because they don't have biases. They don't have these attitudes. They are ready to learn and willing to take directions.
"If you are careful, you can use them effectively," Ahuja explains. "I give credit to students. I publish with them and hold patents with them. They get so fired up.... I constantly pat them on the back. I'm big on incentive-driven approaches.... Most of my new students end up working on a special research project course for credit. They get the course credit, and I get students who are better prepared without my spending a penny. And their research results often yield data for proposals."
Jeff Mendoza, a senior acoustics engineer at Honeywell Engines, Systems and Services, knows Ahuja's mentoring style first hand. He was a doctoral student and graduate research assistant for Ahuja from 1992 to 1997.
"Krish placed a lot of responsibility on his doctoral candidates, allowing us to lead significant research programs from various government and industry funding sources across the globe," Mendoza recalls. "He allowed me to uniquely evolve as a scientific researcher by providing me with a wealth of research opportunities and continuous support. His diversity and, more importantly, his enthusiasm for the fields of aerodynamics and acoustics are certainly something I aspire to. To this day, Krish remains a significant resource and personal friend."
Even Ahuja's peers note his support and appreciate his interest in students.
Jeff Jagoda, a professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering, says: "Krish's graduates are extremely well prepared, which is reflected in the excellent contributions they have made to their field. At the same time, Krish provides not only technical, but also personal, leadership, which explains the loyalty and commitment his students feel toward him and his group."
And Jim McMichael, a principal research engineer at GTRI, adds: "Aside from his technical abilities and creativity, what really jumps out about Krish is his professionalism, courtesy and sincere interest in the development of our younger staff. And it's contagious."
To Ahuja, a good researcher must be thorough, hard-working, curious and up to date on the state of the art. "If you don't stay in touch with the state of the art, you end up re-inventing the wheel," Ahuja explains.
Ahuja has always stayed in touch with the state of the art. In fact, he has often defined the state of the art. His peers have recognized that fact and awarded him the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aeroacoustics Award in 1993 and the AIAA Engineer of the Year international title in 2000. In part, the awards recognized Ahuja's work on jet noise and his pioneering work in the field of flow/acoustic interaction. His experiments using sound to control aircraft flow – that is, to prevent wings from stalling and making an aircraft lose lift – are well known.
Ahuja and his colleagues carried out the first set of experiments to rapidly cool hot jet exhaust by sound. "Basically, we used whistles to affect the flow... It involved taking in cold air from outside and mixing it quickly with the hot jet flow. It's called mixing enhancement and had a lot of research impact around the world," Ahuja says. He is also known for putting tabs on each side of a nozzle to cool the flow and increase mixing, and these studies led to many others around the nation.
The principles that guide Ahuja at work and home, and to which he attributes his success, are honesty and sincerity, he says. "People know I am sincere. They tell me that. They know where I stand."
Luck continues to be a predominant theme in his life. "Good things still keep happening to me," he says. "I am lucky. I am blessed. I have a wonderful wife, smart children in good schools, a nice house and a cabin in the mountains."
Though he has been blessed, Ahuja's life is not without stress, he says. Balancing various work responsibilities is difficult, and balancing work with home is even more difficult, Ahuja says. "It comes at a great sacrifice. I sometimes wonder if it's worth it. I don't write letters to my friends and relatives as much as I used to. I don't have as much time with my family. There's a bit of sadness. But something always keeps you going. Sometimes it's a question of survival. You have to keep going. I don't want to become obsolete, and it's very easy to become obsolete. Even now, I could become obsolete. So I try to read a lot."
In addition to reading in his field, Ahuja has an appetite for learning about other disciplines. His favorite Web page is howthingswork.com, which helps him find explanations on things such as how microprocessors work, how GPS works and how quartz watches work. "I feel like I'm learning something all the time," Ahuja says. "I tell my students that if they are not learning something new each day, there's something wrong."
Another example of Ahuja's goal of learning is the book he's reading right now. It's "E=MC2" by David Bodanis, about how Albert Einstein got the inspiration for the theory of relativity and its impact on humanity since then. "I don't know a lot about Einstein's theory, and I want to know more," Ahuja adds.
His favorite bedtime reading, his wife says, are books with mathematical equations.
When he can make the time, Ahuja loves to sculpt. "I like to do things with my hands. What I have learned often becomes a building block for something else, like how to make things. First, I did pottery, then hand building with clay, then clay sculpture. Sculpting is my out. Tuesday is my night to do what I want, and I've been sculpting since 1987.... Sculpting does something to me. For some people, it's music or flowers. But wherever I go, I find sculpture to look at. Sometimes, I study a nose for half an hour.... Sculpting takes a lot of concentration, but I find it relaxing."
Though life has handed him a number of unexpected opportunities, Ahuja concedes that something more than luck has contributed to his success. He sums it up as his motto: "Whatever you do, do it with passion.... That has lots of implications. To me, it's just second nature now. If it's not unique, I don't consider doing it. So my motto, I guess, is to do everything that is unique. Use everything you know as a good building block."
For more information, contact
Krishan Ahuja, Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, GA 30332-0844. (Telephone: 770-528-7054)
(E-mail: krishan.ahuja@gtri.gatech.edu)
