Professor John Young is the Acting Associate Dean (Education) at UNSW Canberra at ADFA, and is a Professor in the School of Engineering and Information Technology (SEIT).
John graduated from ADFA in 1990, completed a Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Sydney in 1991, and served as an engineering officer in the Royal Australian Air Force until 2001 when he joined UNSW Canberra as a lecturer. He earned a PhD from UNSW in 2005, and has taught and developed courses in undergraduate and postgraduate programs across a range of engineering disciplines, degree streams, experience levels and class sizes, in on-campus semester-based, intensive, and distance and online modes. He has served in a number of educational leadership roles within SEIT culminating in Deputy Head of School (Teaching) in 2014-2018, prior to appointment as Acting ADE in January 2022.
John’s research focusses on unsteady fluid dynamics and fluid-structure interaction, with highly inter-disciplinary applications in zoology (flapping wing insect and bird flight, and fish swimming), biomedical engineering (blood flow and blood vessel collapse), bio-inspired design (flapping wing micro drones, noise reduction in drone rotors and turbines, machine learning for underwater vehicle control, and energy harvesting from oscillating wind and water turbines), shock waves (control and interaction with fixed and flexible structures) and high performance sports drag prediction and reduction (cycling and swimming). He is an editor for the Journal of Fluids and Structures.