Jani Macari Pallis, PI

Our Research Team and Advisors

Dr. Jani Macari Pallis, Principal Investigator

I am the principal investigator on the Aerodynamics in Sports project. Basically, that means that I am the lead researcher and am responsible for the overall project.

Like Dr. Rabi Mehta and Shishir Pandya, I'm an aerodynamicist; as a matter of fact Shishir and I attended school together. Shishir and I both work in a field called computational fluid dynamics or CFD. I use and develop computer software that simulates the motion of liquids or gases. My particular speciality in aeronautics is called hypersonics. Hypersonic vehicles travel more than 5 times the speed of sound or over a mile a second. Now - that's fast! Tennis balls travel much, much slower than that.

My parents thought that I might become an artist because I was always drawing, designing and building things (clothing, sculpures, paper rocket models), but actually it seems that I was just developing the skills I needed to be an engineer. I wanted to be an aerospace engineer from the time I was 12 years old (that's a really long time ago at this point) and when I attended college it was not very common for women to go into engineering.

I have an undergraduate and graduate degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where I specialized in biomedical industrial engineering and computer science. In industrial engineering my main interest was in computer simulations and modeling and motion/time studies. I find it very similar to the work we are doing in this project in the area of the player biomechanics.

I worked for a major airline for 12 years. While I was there I learned to fly an airplane and I decided to return to school. I received a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and my doctorate in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering from the University of California at Davis.

Several years ago I founded a company called Cislunar Aerospace, Inc. I am its CEO (Chief Executive Officer.) We're located at an airport in Napa, California.

My husband, Jim, is also an engineer and a pilot and we have a dog named Lady, 2 cats, 2 birds (one's named Orville after Orville Wright who flew the first powered airplane) and a lot of goldfish.

What I like most about being an engineer is that you need to be part scientist, part detective and part artist. Understanding the science of an area is interesting, but for me applying that knowledge and creating a tool, a machine, or computer software is where the fun lies and how I can make a contribution.

I feel that this project is an excellent opportunity to apply what I know about aerodynamics and computer simulations to sports equipment. The entire team of the Aerodynamics in Sports project as well as the staff at Cislunar Aerospace, hopes that we will be able to make a significant contribution to the understanding of tennis science.

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