Annafederica Urbano

Annafederica Urbano is associate professor in Space Systems and Launchers. She carries out her research activities in the Advanced Space Concepts team at the Department of Design and Control of Aerospace Vehicles (DCAS), where she started as a research engineer in 2019 and was promoted associate professor in January 2022.

A. Urbano is an expert in space propulsion and space transportation systems. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2012 from La Sapienza University of Rome with a thesis on the regenerative cooling system of methane liquid rocket engines. Her research areas of expertise are related with the numerical simulation of reactive and two phase flows in liquid rocket engines : supercritical combustion, thermoacoustic instabilities, nucleate boiling in micro-gravity, two phase compressible flows, transcritical fluids and heat transfer deterioration. Part of her activity is also devoted to space system analysis (rocket engines and launchers) : multi-disciplinary analysis and optimisation, surrogate models from CFD and artificial intelligence.

She is one of the core team members of the ESA Topical team “Propellant management physics”. She has been member of the Space Propulsion Committee of the International Astronautical Federation since 2022.
She is author or co-author of 20 ranked-A journal articles.
She is a reviewer for several scientific journals, including International Journal of Heat and mass Transfer, Journal of Multi-phase flows and Combustion and Flame.

In the Advanced Space Concepts team, A. Urbano is responsible for the SaCLaB chair funded by Ariane Group and Airbus Defense and Space and she leads the research activities devoted to liquid propulsion and launchers.

Background

• 2006 B.Sc Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University
• 2008 M.Sc. Space Engineering, Sapienza University
• 2012 Ph.D. Aeronautical and Space Technology, Sapienza University, Heat transfer to transcritical methane in regenerative cooling channels of LRE
• 2012 - 2013 Research Fellow, Sapienza University
• 2013 - 2015 Postdoc, Institut Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, LES combustion instabilities in LRE
• 2015 - 2016 Research Engineer, Safran Tech
• 2016 - 2018 Postdoc, Institut Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse, Nucleate boiling in micro-gravity
• Jan 2019 - Research Engineer, ISAE SUPAERO, Space Advanced Concepts Laboratory (SaCLab)
• Jan 2022 - Associate professor, ISAE SUPAERO, DCAS