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Hisham Ali's work to design and build a plasma wind tunnel for hypersonics research is being featured in The Economist.

The article discusses a presentation Ali made last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science on magnetohydrodynamics -- the study of electrically conducting fluids like plasma, research critical to the advancement of vehicles that travel at hypersonic speeds.

Plasma is generated when objects travel at such speeds through the atmosphere.

Ali is an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and an expert in plasma physics.

He is studying ways to manipulate plasma flows to control the trajectory of crafts moving at hypersonic velocities.