Richard A. Wirtz

    R.A. Wirtz is a University Foundation Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno.  He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1971. He joined the University of Nevada, Reno faculty as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering in 1986 and served as Chairman of the Department from 1986 through 1992. Prior to that (1970-1985) he was on the faculty at Clarkson University. He is founder (in 1995) of Sierra-Nevada Research and Development, Inc, a company specializing in thermally related product, process and intellectual property development and marketing. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.  He is a recipient of the ASME Electronic Packaging Division Award For Outstanding Contributions To The Field Of Thermal Management Of Microelectronics Equipment And Systems, and the Lemelson Award For Innovation And Entrepreneurship..

He has over thirty-five years experience in heat transfer research and development: forced and natural convection processes, thermal control in electronic packaging, heat transfer augmentation, porous media heat transfer, phase change heat transfer and, nuclear waste storage and transportation. He is experienced with infrared imagery, laser velocimetry, Mach-Zehnder and holographic interferometry, image analysis and all aspects of thermometry and heat flux measurements; and, algorithm development and large-scale computational fluid mechanics and heat transfer software.

The Department of Energy, Gas Research Institute, IBM Corporation, INTEL Corporation, Missile Defense Agency, NASA, The Navy, The National Science Foundation, and a number of small businesses have supported his University research. He is the editor of three volumes and author of two handbook chapters on thermal control in electronics; he owns a patent on nuclear waste disposal; and, he has approximately 75 peer reviewed technical publications.

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Recent Publications

Teaching Portfolio

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