Neil Ashton

Dr Neil Ashton is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Engineering Science. He is an expert in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), with a particular focus on turbulence modelling. He has worked on a number of EU projects with leading companies such as Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Volkswagen and DLR to develop new turbulence models suitable for complex industrial flows.

He completed his MEng and PhD at the University of Manchester and later worked at the Lotus Formula 1 team, where he was responsible for helping to develop the CFD and HPC methodology for the aerodynamic department. Since returning to academia he has focused on developing improved CFD methods and software to enable a truly virtual design process using large-scale HPC facilities. He has given invited talks at NASA, Boeing, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre and others on his work and was recently a visiting scientist at NASA Ames Research Centre.

He is a Chartered Engineer through the IMechE, a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) as well as the NAFEMS CFD working group. He has also written for a number of leading international science magazines on science and engineering.