Dr. Ann Karagozian: U.S. Air Force and NASA Researcher Reflects on Her UCLA Days

By Christine Kojayan
Bruingirl0021@ucla.edu

“Three words that describe me fairly well are busy, committed, and thankful,” states UCLA professor Ann Karagozian. Karagozian attained a Bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a Masters and Ph.D. at Caltech in Mechanical Engineering. As a current UCLA faculty member, the department in which Karagozian works is the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. Karagozian really enjoys working at UCLA, saying, “I am really committed to the idea of a public institution and public education; we have exceptionally bright students at UCLA.”

Professor Karagozian is a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and was the SAB Vice Chair from 2005 till 2009. She is currently chairing an SAB study on Future Launch Vehicle systems and previously chaired SAB studies on Air Vehicle Fuel Efficiency (2006) and on Persistence at Near Space Altitudes (2005). Prof. Karagozian has also chaired panels for the SAB dealing with sensor technologies for Hard and Deeply Buried Targets.

Karagozian is also a recipient of the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service from the U.S. Air Force (2001), and is a member of Tau Beta Pi, Phi Beta Kappa, the Combustion Institute, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. She is also the current Chair-Elect of the American Physical Society/Division of Fluid Dynamics. At UCLA, she is the Vice Chair/Chair Elect of the Academic Senate, and is slated to serve as Chair of the Senate during 2010-11.

Karagozian believes that future engineers should have practical experience. “I worked a while when I was in college, part time during the school year, and full time during summer at the Hughes Aircraft company in Canoga Park,” she says. Karagozian feels that this and other experiences in industry and in consulting have been immensely valuable for her. She’s currently engaged with research for the Air Force and NASA, as well as the National Science Foundation.

Her favorite subjects in school were always math and science, especially math, but she also enjoyed English literature and U.S. history. Even as a high school student, Karagozian began taking engineering classes at UCLA, and had the opportunity to work with a professor who was teaching the class. “They had a program at UCLA where if you scored high enough on certain exams, you could take UCLA classes while you were still in high school. So I did that and took not only an engineering class, but also an Armenian Literature class in English with Professor Avedis Sanjian [now deceased].”

Upon hearing the name Prof. Richard Hovannisian, Karagozian mentions, “I was privileged to have been able to take an Armenian history class with Prof. Hovannisian, which was really great. In fact, one of my great aunts was interviewed a long time ago by a student from the UCLA Armenian Oral History project in our history department, and I have friends whose grandparents were also interviewed at the time,” referring to the History 107D course that is currently offered.

“My generation is typical of what Armenian-Americans were like in Los Angeles when I was growing up. Most of us had grandparents that were genocide survivors and parents that were born in the United States,” Karagozian explains. The number of Armenians grew in the states substantially during the 1970s through the 1990s, due to the civil war in Lebanon, the breakdown of the Soviet Union, as well as the Islamic Revolution in Iran. “When I was growing up attending public schools, none of my schoolmates knew who the Armenians were. Now, it is different,” Karagozian said. Currently an active member of the United Armenian Congregational church, Karagozian recalls attending Saturday Armenian language school as a child at a nearby church, St. James Armenian Church. “There were few, if any, Armenian day schools at the time,” she notes.

In her spare time, Karagozian enjoys gardening and reading, as well as spending time with her two kids and husband, who is also a researcher at UCLA. “I don’t know where I see myself in ten years, but there are opportunities that I have been given, and I thank God for them. I try to do my best with the opportunities I’m offered,” Karagozian states.