Sergey Macheret

About Sergey Macheret

Sergey O. Macheret is an American physicist and aerospace engineer specializing in plasma science, high-temperature gas dynamics, and aerospace applications of plasmas. He has contributed to the study of nonequilibrium chemical reactions, magnetohydrodynamics, and plasma-based flow control. His work includes the development of the Macheret formulas for endothermic exchange reactions and the Macheret-Fridman model of vibration-dissociation coupling.

Macheret earned his Ph.D. in plasma physics and plasma chemistry from the Kurchatov Institute in 1985. He later worked as a researcher and lecturer at The Ohio State University and as a senior research scientist at Princeton University. From 2006 to 2014, he was a senior staff engineer at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company, Skunk Works, where he worked on advanced aerospace technologies. In 2014, he joined Purdue University as a professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a position he held until 2024.

Macheret is the co-founder and CEO of US Plasma Engineering LLC, a company focused on plasma applications in aerospace, energy, and other fields. He has authored over 80 journal papers, numerous conference papers, and several book chapters. His research has led to 15 U.S. patents and patent applications.

In recognition of his contributions, Macheret was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 2022 “for seminal contributions to, and leadership in, understanding molecular processes in high-enthalpy flows and novel aerospace applications of plasmas” and received the AIAA Plasmadynamics and Lasers Award “for pioneering work on novel plasma generation and control methods and on aerospace applications of plasma” the same year.

His work continues to influence the fields of aerospace engineering and plasma science.