JAYANTA KAPAT

Jayanta Kapat is Pegasus Professor and Trustee Chair in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and the founding Director of  Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research (CATER) at the University of Central Florida. He obtained his Sc.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. 

He joined UCF in 1997 as an Assistant Professor, and was promoted to the ranks of Associate Professor and Professor in 2001 and 2005, respectively. With external support of more than $22M for his individual research, mostly from NASA, DOE and OEM’s, he has facilitated significant graduate- and undergraduate-level research, graduated 35 Ph.D., 61 MS and 17 BS Honors-in-Major (HIM) (Thesis) students, and published more than 350 papers in journals and conferences – mostly co-authored with his students. 

He has also 14 patents issued. He was awarded the ASME IGTI Industrial Gas Turbine Technology Award in 2024, in recognition of his sustained personal creative scientific or technological contributions unique to electric power or mechanical drive industrial gas turbine technology.