John Cater

John E. Cater received the B.E. (Hons.) degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, in 1997, and the Ph.D. degree from Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, in 2003 in the field of fluid mechanics. He then moved to Europe to work on EU-supported aerospace research programs ENABLE, JEAN and COJEN creating future aircraft technologies and investigating aircraft noise reduction. He spent six years in Ireland and the U.K., working as a Research Fellow with Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, and Trinity College Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., before becoming a permanent academic with Queen Mary, University of London, London, U.K. In 2008, he returned to The University of Auckland and joined Department of Engineering Science where he is currently an Associate Professor, leading work in computational mechanics and signal processing. In 2016, he became Deputy Head of Department. He has authored or coauthored more than 120 research articles in peer-reviewed journals and international conference proceedings, as well as three book chapters and two patents. He was one of the founders of the Auckland Programme for Space Systems, which gives undergraduate students the opportunity to design, build and launch nanosatellites to orbit. He was the Engineering Lead for New Zealand's first domestically constructed science satellite mission, launched from the Mahia peninsula in October 2020. His current research interests include electric propulsion for small satellites and modeling of thermal protection systems for reentry craft.