Ndaona Chokani, born in Malawi and a citizen of the USA, received his B.A. (Honours -First Class), in engineering science from Oxford University in 1984 and his Ph.D. in engineering from Cambridge University in 1988. Chokani was respectively a Junior Common Room Scholar and Cambridge Livingstone Trust Scholar at Oxford and Cambridge. Chokani is at ETH Zurich, since 2006, having previously been a Professor for 17 years in the USA, on the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University, Durham NC, USA, and prior to that the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC, USA.

Chokani leads the wind energy program at ETH Zurich. Chokani is President of Switzerland’s International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Technical Committee 88 (responsible for international standards for wind turbines), Incoming Chair of ASME’s International Gas Turbine Institute (IGTI) Wind Energy Committee, an Executive Committee Member of the European Academy of Wind Energy, and has served on scientific committees for European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) conferences.

Chokani’s previous research in the USA focused on experimental studies of hypersonic flows; the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA, and the U.S. National Science Foundation supported this previous research. Chokani has previously served on the U.S. National Academies’ Air Force Science and Technology Board, as an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal and the Journal of Aircraft, and as a Member of the AIAA Transition Study Group, AIAA Aerodynamics Measurement Technology Technical Committee, and AIAA Thermophysics Technical Committee.

Chokani is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and member of the international society for optics and photonics (SPIE).