Professor Richard (Dick) Miles is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M.
Professor Miles received his B.S. in 1966, M.S. and 1967, and Ph.D. in 1972 all from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering. While at Stanford he was a Fannie and John Hertz Fellow. He joined the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering faculty at Princeton University in the Fall of 1972. From 1980 to 1996 he served as Chairman of Engineering Physics. He was named Robert Porter Patterson Professor in 2011 and became Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Princeton on June 30, 2013. In February 2017 he joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University as TEES Distinguished Research Professor and in 2019 was named University Distinguished Professor.
His research focuses on the use of lasers, electron beams, microwaves and magnetic devices to observe, control, accelerate, extract power and precondition gas flows for supersonic and hypersonic fluid dynamics, combustion, propulsion and homeland defense applications. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the Board of Directors of the Fannie & John Hertz Foundation, a member of the Board of Directors of Precision Optics Corporation, Inc., a Member of the Board of Trustees of Pacific University (Forest Grove, OR), an AIAA Representative to the Elmer A. Sperry Board of Award and a Fellow of the AIAA and the Optical Society of America. He was the recipient of the AIAA Aerodynamics Measurement Award and Medal in 2000 and the AIAA Plasma Dynamics and Lasers Award and Medal in 2012.
