5th ERCOFTAC Da Vinci Competition 2010 - Winner

Oliver Buxton

"The Fine Scale Features of Turbulent Shear Flow"
(Imperial College London, United Kingdom)

• Which year did you win?

I won in 2010 with my PhD thesis on "The Fine Scale Features of Turbulent Shear Flow" completed at Imperial College.

• What is your role now?

I am a professor of fluid mechanics in the Aeronautics Department at Imperial College London (I was just appointed professor in September 2024, although I have been in the same department for 11 years now)

• What did winning mean to you?

Winning was a huge confidence boost that I could go on and aspire to an academic career, which I was uncertain about at the time.

• What impact did the Da Vinci award have on your career?

It was a very important step for me - it helped me to secure a good postdoc position and the money was important too as the funding for my PhD had run out but I was still living in London, which is expensive, finishing off some papers! I would say that it really kick started my career.

• What motivates you in your work?

Good science is what motivates my work. I would say that I am fascinated by turbulence and find its phenomenology deeply interesting and trying to better
understand "one of the last unsolved problems of classical mechanics" is an enormous motivation. I take the greatest satisfaction from identifying new
fundamental descriptions of turbulence and then being able to apply these to a diverse range of real-world problems.

• What advice would you give to this year’s winner?

Enjoy the moment. I was a bit overwhelmed at the time that I won it as I was juggling a lot of balls at the time so I never really had the opportunity to enjoy
my success which was a shame.

Da Vinci P​resentation available here