Timothee Pourpoint

An AAE professor who is an internationally recognized authority on chemical rocket propellants, with an emphasis on hypergolic propellants, and energy storage systems has been selected for the University Faculty Scholars Program by the Office of the Provost.

Timothee Pourpoint’s research has enabled new capabilities and new opportunities to advance the state-of-the-art and meet the nation’s needs in defense and space exploration ambitions.

The hypergolic propellants research capability developed at the Maurice Zucrow Laboratories by Pourpoint is unmatched in academia in the United States and the world, and the research has been supported by all branches of the Department of Defense, NASA, numerous aerospace companies and the Japanese Space Agency.

The University Faculty Scholars Program recognizes outstanding mid-career faculty who are on an accelerated path for academic distinction. Faculty must hold the rank of tenured associate or full professor and have been in that rank for no more than five years. Faculty Scholars are appointed for a five-year term and receive an annual $10,000 discretionary allocation.

“I have watched several of the recipients of the University Faculty Scholars Program over the past few years and often told myself it would be an honor to be counted among this group of research leaders. I am truly humbled by this recognition,” said Pourpoint, who earned a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue in 2005.

Pourpoint started at Purdue as a research scientist in 2006 and joined the faculty in 2013. He is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.