A physicist at FEDSM2026

Every once in a while I blog about some conferences that I attended, such as the 2018 Joint Mathematics Meeting in San Diego, the 2023 American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting in Las Vegas, and the 2024 APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) Meeting in Salt Lake City.  I'm now adding to this series by discussing my attendance at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Fluids Engineering Division (FED) summer meeting (FEDSM) in Bellevue, WA.  FEDSM2026 also celebrates the centennial of the FED, an anniversary I mentioned earlier this year.  For most of the year I wasn't sure if I would be able to attend, but I finally registered in late June.  The conference ran from July 26-29, 2026, and met concurrently with ASME's Summer Heat Transfer Conference (SHTC) and its Energy and Sustainability (ES) Conference.  Attendees were allowed to cross-attend most events in all three meetings, and the reception and two of the lunches were communal among all three.

Bellevue is on the other side of Lake Washington from Seattle, and I flew into SEA-TAC airport on Sunday July 26.  I had been to Bellevue once before, to visit Bellevue Square for dinner with friends.  Bellevue Square was within walking distance of the conference venue.  I had a chance to take a walk through Bellevue's Downtown Park, and nearby Meydenbauer Bay Park that afternoon, before returning to the conference venue (the Hyatt Regency) for the evening reception.  Tragically there was a mass shooting over in Seattle that occurred during the Bite of Seattle event at Seattle Center that very evening.  Those of us at the reception were blissfully unaware of the tragic events that unfolded that evening.

The first regular day of the meeting, Monday the 27th, was the day I was most looking forward to.  It began with an outstanding plenary talk by Prof. Alfred Soldati (TU Wien), on "Bubble and Drop Breakup in Turbulence."  He was also the recipient of this year's ASME Fluids Engineering Award, the division's highest award.  I'll skip ahead and mention the final plenary talk of the meeting, on Wednesday morning the 29th, on "Particles in Liquids:  Collisions, Stress, and the Legacy of R. A. Bagnold" by Prof. Melany Hunt of CalTech. Both of these talks focused on multiphase flows, and were outstanding.  Not only was the research presented extremely interesting, it was presented very well by both speakers.  Unlike some of the routine technical talks, these plenary talks were well organized and easy to follow -- I would even say riveting.  I could imagine either talk being presented at APS-DFD, as they addressed fundamental issues.  My complements to FED for selecting these plenary speakers.

Returning to the first day, Prof. Soldati's keynote was followed by the FEDSM town hall, a sort of annual report on the division.  As this was my first attendance at FEDSM (and only second at an ASME-only conference), I found it very informative.  FEDSM is an annual event, but every four years (including 2027) instead of co-meeting with SHTC and ES, they co-meet with the Japanese and Korean mechanical engineering societies in Asia, at an event known as AJK.  However, FEDSM does sponsor tracks in the SHTC/ES joint meeting back in the states. Finally FEDSM sponsors tracks at the annual international ASME meeting, called the IMECE (International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition).  I also learned that FED sponsors two journals, the Journal of Fluids Engineering and the Journal of Verification, Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification.  The current lead editor of JFE is D. Keith Walters of the University of Arkansas, and the current lead editor of VVUQ is Aaron Koskelo of Los Alamos National Labs (who could not attend the conference).  There were at least 260 registrants of the conference, though there were certainly a lot more than that number present, due to the co-meeting with SHTC and ES.  Even so, the combined conference still felt smaller than APS-DFD.  Another sign of this is that there were hardly any exhibitors at this meeting, and no separate exhibit hall.  Rather, the large open space in front of the ballrooms served as the exhibit space (I counted only 3-4 exhibitors) as well as the reception area and the registration area.  The above photo looks down the hall through this space.  The photo below shows part of the hotel lobby, with the ballroom area visible on the second floor.

I was eager to attend the two sessions on Fluids Education, one scheduled before lunch, and one after.  They did not disappoint.  One of the speakers, Prof. Ivana Milanovic of U. Hartford, gave an informative talk on the history of fluids education in the U.S., during the afternoon session. There was also a memorable joint presentation by Profs. Aarthi Sekaran (SUNY Poly) and Sarah Beetham (Oakland U.) on a very crafty experimental flow visualization project they incorporated in their classes.  The morning session had a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), a topic that came up in nearly every side-conversation I had, whether at lunch or at the reception.  The morning session keynote by Prof. Ganesh Raman (California State University's assistant vice chancellor for research) described how his university system was implementing AI at university-scale.  The afternoon session ended with a presentation by a very precocious high school student.

Later that afternoon, I attended a memorial session for Frank White, a major figure within the FED (for example, he was once lead editor of JFE), as well as the University of Rhode Island.  He is known worldwide as the author of acclaimed textbooks in fluids and heat transfer.  Finally, I ended the day by attending the Energy and Sustainability Power Hour, which was kind of like a networking/focus group session.  It was quite fun.  Indeed, the networking opportunities here, at the reception, and all three lunches, were an unexpected highlight of the meeting. Because of its smaller size, I interacted with far more attendees on a personal level than I usually do at APS-DFD.

I ended the evening with a very late dinner at Din Tai Fung, which was right across the street from the hotel (shown above), sampling (among other dishes) their famed Xiaolongbao, shown below.

There were so many tempting restaurants in the immediate area, that I felt as if I were missing out on all the places I didn't have the time to try!  This Din Tai Fung was the third I have eaten in, having previously visited the ones in Santa Monica, CA, and Taipei, Taiwan (in the 101 Taipei skyscraper).

I allowed myself to sleep in on the morning of Day 2, having been severely sleep deprived for the previous two nights in a row.  Thus I missed that morning's keynote, which I did not regret, as I observed the speaker take a phone call during someone else's talk later that day.  How rude!  On Day 2, I began flitting in and out of the regular technical sessions, which I continued to do in the late morning of Day 3.  The awards lunch was held on Day 2, and I even got to have a small slice of the FED centennial birthday cake!

Based on the photo of the uncut cake that FED posted on LinkedIn, it appears that my piece captured part of the "E" in ASME, under which was written "Setting the Standard".  So the "AR" is from the end of "Standard".

I attended an afternoon plenary talk by Joseph Katz (Johns Hopkins), like Frank White, a former lead editor of JFE and textbook author.  His talk was titled "Turbulent Boundary Layers over Complex Surfaces" (see below).

I ended Day 2 by attending a panel session at the SHTC on "Modern Insights into Computational Fluid Dynamics".   Unfortunately I could not make much sense of it, as I had missed the panelists' individual presentations because I was at the Katz plenary.  I managed to catch the end of the panel discussion, but it was less useful to me than I had hoped.  That evening I had dinner at Fogo de Chao, the Brazilian steakhouse, within walking distance of the hotel.  On the way there I observed what appeared to be a pro-Ukraine protest on a street corner.  The concierge at my hotel gave me a coupon for a free dessert at Fogo de Chao; here is a shot of my key lime pie:

On Day 3, the day began with a panel session on the "Past, Present, and Future of Fluid Mechanics".  The panelists and their focus were, in order, Professors Ted Heindel (Iowa State University) on experimental fluid mechanics, Zhonquan Zheng (Utah State University) on computational fluid dynamics, and Francine Battaglia (U. of Buffalo) on fluids education.  The moderator was the conference chair, Prof. Ning Zhang (McNeese State U.).

Here are the panelists, conveniently sitting in the order in which they spoke:

The panel session was followed by Prof. Melany Hunt's plenary, which I discussed above.  I then attended a technical session, and joined the third and final lunch.  Unfortunately I had to catch a plane, so I headed back to the airport and missed the Rising Stars plenary session that ended Day 3.  It was perhaps regrettable that I was so busy chatting to folks at my table at the lunches, that I completely missed out on the poster sessions.

Conference papers are already posted on the ASME website, and there is supposed to be a special issue of JFE next August (yes, a year from now) with papers from this year's conference.  However, the division promises to have special centenary articles in forthcoming issues of JFE and Mechanical Engineer magazine later this year.  Finally, unlike with the 2023 APS March Meeting, I used the ASME meeting app without any difficulties at FEDSM2026.  

I would like to add that the meeting hotel, the Hyatt Regency, was very impressive.  Every staff member I interacted with was unfailingly nice and helpful.  They even made special hotel room keys for the conference, which I kept as souvenirs:

This was the first time I've seen a hotel make themed room keys, but I'm sure it won't be the last.  My stay was only marred on the last day by a partial power outage in my tower.

So, what did this physicist think?  I was glad to have attended the once-in-a-lifetime centenary meeting of the FED.  It nourished my soul.  I doubt I will have the means and opportunity to attend either the FEDSM or DFD annual meetings for a very long time, so it was particularly fortunate that I did have the ability to attend this year's centennial FEDSM (being in the western U.S. helps).  As I mentioned in my post on the 2024 DFD, the fluids specialty meetings are probably of lesser interest to me at this stage of my career than a larger meeting like the APS Global Physics Summit (formed form the merger of the March and April meetings).  There was definitely more of a focus on engineering research at FEDSM than I have seen at DFD.  On the other hand, this being a smaller meeting (even accounting for the fact that three different conferences were meeting together) allowed me far more face-to-face networking than I usually do at either APS DFD or the March Meeting.  This, despite that I did not meet a single person that I knew from beforehand.  In summary, I had a great time at FEDSM and in Bellevue, but it's unlikely I'll be able to go to another FEDSM (or DFD) for a very long time.