Associate Professor Nicholas Lawson is an Aerospace Engineer, Commercial Pilot and Academic who joined the Department of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Sydney in Oct21. Previous to this, Nick worked for 22 years in the School of Aerospace at Cranfield University. Over this period, he was Head of National Flying Laboratory Centre (NFLC) for 5 years and was a Professor in Aerodynamics and Airborne Measurement. Nick holds a Commercial Pilots Licence, with over 2500 hours of flying experience in the NFLC Jetstream 31 flying lab, including flight trials in the BAE Systems Flying Test Bed.
He was also previously an instructor in the Bulldog and Slingsby light aircraft and is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the Society of Flight Test Engineers.
Nick’s areas of research include optical instrumentation and sensing for flow diagnostics and aerodynamics, applied in wind tunnel and airborne environments. He completed his PhD with Rolls-Royce plc (RR) and his post-doc was at the University of Melbourne developing a flow diagnostics lab in the Faculty of Engineering, between 1995–1999. Recent research work has also Airbus UK and Meggitt, as well as EU partners, including DLR, TNO and TU Delft. His current research continues to focus is on advanced instrumentation for aerodynamic measurement, where fibre optic sensors are a key part of this work.