Dana Dabiri is an associate professor at the William E Boeing Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington, in Seattle. He received a BS in mechanical engineering at the University of California, San Diego, in 1985; an MS in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1987; and a PhD in aerospace engineering at the University of California, San Diego, in 1992. Charles Pecora studied mechanical engineering at the University of Miami, where he was introduced to fluid dynamics during a project focused on testing and optimizing a novel vertical axis wind turbine design. After graduating in 2016, he pursued a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington under the mentorship of Dabiri. Since his graduation in 2019, he became a systems engineer for APiJET.