Richard Miles

Richard Miles is Distinguished University Professor and O'Donnell Chair V at the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University. He was Chairman of the Engineering Physics Program at Princeton for 16 years (1980–1996). He has been a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 2011. He has developed and researched lasers as tools for studying hypersonic flow patterns. grew up in Orinda, California. He was influenced in his scientific pursuits by his older brother Tom with whom he conducted impromptu explosive experiments in the family's backyard and home during the boys' shared childhood.

While still in high school, Miles spent two summers interning at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, studying the interaction of K-mesons with deuterium under Luis Alvarez.

Miles applied and was accepted to Stanford University, where his grandfather had been a professor of psychology during the 1920s, matriculating in the fall of 1961. Initially a physics major, Miles switched in his junior year to electrical engineering. He spent nine months in Europe as part of the Stanford-in-France overseas program and graduated in January 1966.

Continuing his graduate work at Stanford, Miles studied first in the Systems Techniques Laboratory "on holography and laser propagation" with Joseph Goodman, then with Hubert Heffner on quantum systems. When Heffner left Stanford to join the staff at the Nixon White House, Miles applied for and received funding from the Hertz Foundation.

Career Miles's first job out of Stanford was at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he joined the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering faculty in the Fall of 1972. He served as Chairman of Engineering Physics from 1980 to 1996. He was named Robert Porter Patterson Professor in 2011 and became emeritus and Senior Scholar at Princeton on June 30, 2013.

While at Princeton, Miles and his research team developed numerous flow diagnostic methods including Femtosecond Laser Electronic Excitation Tagging (FLEET), a velocimetry technique with the capacity to measure fluid velocity at high flow speeds.

Miles retired from Princeton in 2013. He then joined Texas A&M University in February 2017 after being recruited through the Governor's University Research Initiative, which awarded Texas A&M a $5 million grant associated with his appointment. He joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering as a TEES Distinguished Research Professor, where he was named University Research Professor in 2019. Work in Texas includes laser diagnostics for hypersonics and directed energy for the Bush Combat Development Complex (BCDC).

Research and boards His research focuses on the use of lasers, electron beams, microwaves and magnetic devices to observe, control, accelerate, extract power and precondition gas flows for supersonic and hypersonic fluid dynamics, combustion, propulsion and homeland defense applications.

Awards Fannie and John K. Hertz Fellowship (1969-1972); Certificate of Distinguished Service to the AIAA, (1994); AIAA Aerodynamic Measurement Technology Award and Medal, (2000); AIAA Plasma Dynamics and Lasers Award and Medal, (2012); US Air Force Commander’s Public Service Award (2015); W.E. Lamb Medal for Laser Science and Quantum Optics (2026).