Dr Bidur Khanal

Dr Bidur Khanal is Head of Department for Aerospace and Aircraft Engineering, he joined Kingston in August 2024 from MBDA Missile Systems, UK. In MBDA, Dr Khanal was the Team Lead in Simulation and Modelling Department, where he led one of the largest team of engineers. Prior to MBDA, Dr Khanal spent over 4 years at Coventry University as a senior lecturer in aerospace engineering. Before joining Coventry, he was working at Cranfield University’s Centre for Defence Engineering as a lecturer in Complex Weapons.

Dr Khanal graduated from Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University with a BEng (First Class Honours) in Aeromechanical Systems Engineering in 2004. He has an MPhil on Computational Aeroacoustics from University of Southampton, and a PhD in aerodynamics (2010) for his research in the noise generation mechanism in transonic cavities with missiles from Cranfield University. He was recipient of several national and international awards/scholarships during his time as a student in the UK.

After PhD, he was appointed as a postdoc in turbomachinery research at Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford. He was based at Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre at Oxford. After spending over two and half years at Oxford, he joined GE Power as an aerodynamic methods and tools engineer in Research and Development (R&D) department. At GE, his main responsibilities were in the development of computational tools for the aerodynamic design/optimisation of turbine blades.

Dr Khanal is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a Fellow of Royal Aeronautical Society, UK. He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK. He has delivered lectures as an invited speaker at various forums in the UK and internationally. His research interests are on investigations of problems in high speed aerodynamics, non-linear heat transfer and turbomachinery using high fidelity computational methods.

Dr Khanal is passionate about offering industry-informed engineering courses. His own academic journey has had industry involvement right from his undergraduate time, his undergraduate final year project was sponsored by Advantage-CFD, Aerodynamic Design Department of British Formula One team, BAR Honda. During his time at Southampton, his research was sponsored by Airbus. He is driven to further expand Kingston University’s focus on continuing to deliver Aerospace Engineering courses which are in tune with the industry.

• PhD Computational Aerodynamics and Aeroacoustics, Cranfield University
• MPhil Computational Aeroacoustics, University of Southampton
• BEng (Hons) Aeromechanical Systems Engineering, Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University
• PGCert in Academic Practice