Rafael Palacios is a professor in Aeronautics at Imperial College London, where he has been since 2007. He is Aeronautical Engineer from Universidad Politécnica, Madrid, and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, which he attended with a Fulbright Fellowship.

Before his PhD he spent four years at Airbus’s Aeroelasticity Department in Madrid. His research is on computational methods in aeroservoelasticity and fluid-structure interactions, with applications to aeroelastic design and control of large offshore wind turbines and very flexible air vehicles.

His research has been funded by the UK Research Council, European Commission, AFOSR, QinetiQ and Airbus. He has also acted as technical consultant with Airbus, Facebook and MSC Software in the translation of his research in nonlinear aeroelasticity to industrial applications.

He received the best undergraduate student award in Spain, the AIAA Foundation Orville and Wilbur Wright Graduate Award for best PhD thesis in aerospace engineering in the US, and Imperial’s best supervisor award in 2013. Rafael is associate editor of Progress in Aerospace Sciences, the Journal of Fluids and Structures, and the Journal of Aircraft, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a member of the AIAA Structural Dynamics Technical Committee.