An aerospace engineer by training---both B.S. and M.S., with a Ph.D. in progress for later this year---I am now a public librarian, teaching and developing adult computer classes and providing general assistance with computers and other technology to customers at the Norman, Oklahoma Public Library. My focus is on providing superb customer service regardless of the level of the customer’s knowledge.

My Ph.D. research at Penn State focuses on the prediction of the rotor noise from helicopters through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) predictions of the airflow around the helicopter. I am developing a new computer program, the Immersed Boundary Solver for Environment Noise (IBSEN), to calculate the airflow in a way that reduces the complexity of the user inputs, but still preserves the complicated interactions needed to predict the noise. This research has been funded by the U.S. Army under the Vertical Lift Research Centers of Excellence (VLRCOE) program.

I am also one of the authors of PSU-WOPWOP, a code for predicting helicopter noise, and have worked with researchers at Bell Helicopter, the Boeing Company, NASA, and other companies providing PSU-WOPWOP technical support. For more information contact consulting@chrishennes.com.

Finally, I am the Director of Operations for the all-volunteer not-for-profit Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, operators of the eGullet Forums at http://forums.egullet.org. In this volunteer position I am responsible for ensuring the day-to-day operation of the forums, including managing a staff of five to ten other volunteers who are responsible for moderating the forums. This primarily entails settling disputes between the volunteers and our members, adjusting the Member Agreement for technological progress and general societal and membership changes, and working with the Executive Director and the rest of the Board of Directors (on which I serve as Treasurer) to set the future direction of the Society.