My profile

Last updated: September 2023

Professor Bakhtier (Baki) Farouk received his BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 1975. He served as a Lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at BUET during 1975-1976. Professor Farouk started his training in the United States as a graduate student at the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Houston, Texas in 1976 (Advisor: Professor Fazle Hussain). He received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in 1978 and 1981 respectively from the University of Delaware (Advisor: Professor Selcuk Guceri) and thereafter joined the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics department in Drexel University as an Assistant Professor in September 1981. He was promoted to the ranks of Associate Professor in 1987 and Professor in 1989 respectively. He is serving as the J. Harland Billings Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Drexel since 2004.

Professor Farouk’s research and teaching interests include thermoacoustics, transport in supercritical fluids, impact physics, microscale flows and heat transfer, combustion and fires, transport processes in materials processing, multi-phase flows, atmospheric pressure plasma processing, and computational fluid dynamics. Various federal agencies and numerous companies have sponsored Professor Farouk’s research for the past thirty-eight years. Professor Farouk has published more than one hundred and fifty journal papers in his research areas and twenty seven of his graduate students have received the Ph. D. degree to date. He has also contributed a number of book chapters. Many of his former Ph. D. students are now pursuing teaching and research carriers in academia and industry in the US and in various other countries of the world.

He has served as a consultant for various industries. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Pennsylvania, a Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Senior Member of the American Physical Society. He was awarded the SAE Ralph Teetor Educational Award in 1986 and the American Society of Metals Henry Marion Howe Medal in 1989. He served as a Summer Faculty Research Associate at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D. C. in 1988 and 1997. He served as a Guest Researcher at Air Products and Chemicals Inc. on a sabbatical leaves during 1991-92 and also served as a Guest Researcher the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD on sabbatical leaves during 1999-00 respectively. He was awarded the Presidential Citation for outstanding achievement by the University of Delaware in 1999. Professor Farouk received the Ira Cohen Fluid Dynamics Award from the Philadelphia Chapter of AIAA in May 2008. He served as a Guest Researcher at US Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD on a sabbatical leave during 2015-16. Professor Farouk now serves as the (elected) Chair of the Drexel Senate Committee of Faculty Affairs (2023 – 2025)

Professor Farouk lives in Mount Laurel, New Jersey with his wife (Nadira Farouk, MBA; CPA). Their daughter Samira Farouk, MD is an Associate Professor of Nephrology at the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, New York.