UT Dallas Hosts International Wind
Energy Conference

The Wind Energy Center at The University of Texas at Dallas hosted more than two hundred people at the North American Wind Energy Academy (NAWEA)/WindTech 2025 conference, an international conference focused on wind energy science.

“This year’s keynote sessions featured world-renowned experts driving innovation, offering attendees rare insights into the future of wind energy and sharing groundbreaking research,” stated Dr. Mario Rotea, professor of mechanical engineering and former holder of the Jonsson School Chair. “The conference as a whole is an exceptional forum that provides an opportunity for researchers to share cutting-edge findings and foster collaborations that will shape the next generation of wind technologies.”

Rotea served as conference chair along with Dr. Geoff Klise from Sandia National Laboratories. Dr. Todd Griffith, also a professor of mechanical engineering at the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, served as co-lead for the conference’s scientific committee. Sponsors included NAWEA and Sandia National Laboratories.

Keshav Panthi, a mechanical engineering PhD student at UT Dallas who plans to defend his dissertation in fall 2025, was one of many presenters who shared work at the conference. “This was the first time hosting the conference at UT Dallas, so it was exciting to be there,” Panthi said.

At the end of the week, participants visited the Boundary Layer and Subsonic Wind Tunnel (BLAST) wind tunnel housed at the UT Dallas campus. UT Dallas faculty and staff gave the participants a tour of BLAST, a closed-return wind tunnel with two test sections. The first is used to reproduce high Reynolds-numbers boundary layer flows to simulate turbulence, and the second is used for subsonic aeronautical applications.

As wind energy continues to be a significant component of energy generation in Texas, UT Dallas continues to lead research in this important area through the  Wind Energy Center at UT Dallas. The Center includes the Center for Wind Energy Science, Technology and Research (WindSTAR), a public-private research partnership in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Lowell. WindSTAR was recently awarded a five-year $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.