About

Shane Ross is a professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech. He holds the Roanoke Electric Steel Chair in Engineering and has received numerous awards including the NSF CAREER Award in 2012 and the Excellence in Research Award from Virginia Tech College of Engineering in 2017. His research expertise encompasses biomechanics, dynamics and control, fluid mechanics, and solid mechanics. Ross's laboratory specializes in applications of nonlinear dynamics, performing mathematical modeling, simulation, visualization, and experiments across various fields such as oceanic and atmospheric flow dispersal patterns, passive and active aerodynamic gliding, dynamic buckling of flexible structures, transport across air-water interfaces, orbital mechanics, and chemical physics. His work emphasizes causality analysis in complex natural and artificial systems, contributing significantly to the understanding of nonlinear dynamical systems in engineering contexts.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Aerospace engineering
• Physics
• Oceanography
• Engineering
• Geology
• Ecology
• Computer Science
• Fishery
• Remote sensing
• Environmental engineering
• Biology
• Waste management
• Meteorology
• Classical mechanics
• Marine engineering
• Mechanics

Selected publications

• From Field to Sky: Measurement and Modeling of Transgenic Switchgrass Pollen Dispersal in the Atmosphere

  Research Square · 2026-03-09

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• NumbaCS: A fast Python package for coherent structure analysis

  The Journal of Open Source Software · 2025-09-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  NumbaCS (Numba Coherent Structures) is a Python package that efficiently implements a variety of methods for studying material transport in time-dependent fluid flows.It leverages Numba -a high performance Python compiler for generating optimized machine code from Python functions -along with other Numba-compatible packages behind the scenes, producing fast and user-friendly implementations of coherent structure methods."Coherent structure methods" refer to any method that can be used to infer or extract Lagrangian and objective Eulerian coherent structures.The theory behind these methods has been developed over the last few decades with the aim of extending many of the important invariant objects from time-independent dynamical systems theory to the more general setting where a system may have arbitrary time dependence and may only be known or defined for some finite time.These time-dependent systems are ubiquitous in the context of geophysical and engineering flows where the evolution of the velocity field depends on time and velocity data representing these flows is not available for all time.By extending the ideas from the time-independent setting to the more general time-dependent setting, important transient objects (coherent structures) that govern how material is transported within a flow can be identified.Understanding material transport in flows is of great importance for applications ranging from monitoring the transport of a contaminant in the ocean or atmosphere to informing search and rescue strategies for persons lost at sea.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• From Field to Sky: Measurement and Modeling of Transgenic Switchgrass Pollen Dispersal in the Atmosphere

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Author Correction: Cannabis pollen dispersal across the United States

  Scientific Reports · 2025-02-09

  erratumOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cislunar resonant transport and heteroclinic pathways: From 3:1 to 2:1 to L1

  Advances in Space Research · 2025-12-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Cislunar Mean-Motion Resonances: Definitions, Widths, and Comparisons with Resonant Satellites

  Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics · 2025-12-29

  articleSenior author

  Lunar mean-motion resonances (MMRs) significantly shape cislunar dynamics beyond geosynchronous orbit, forming stable/unstable orbit pairs with corresponding intermingled chaotic and regular regions. The resonance zone is rigorously defined using the separatrices of unstable resonant periodic orbits surrounding stable quasi-periodic regions. Our study leverages the planar circular restricted three-body problem to estimate the (stable) resonance widths and (unstable) chaotic resonance zones of influence of the 2:1 and 3:1 MMRs across various Jacobi constants, employing a Poincaré map at perigee and presenting findings in easily interpretable geocentric orbital elements. An analysis of the semi-major axis versus eccentricity plane reveals broader regions of resonance influence than those predicted by semi-analytical models based on the perturbed Kepler problem. A comparison with high-fidelity three-dimensional ephemeris propagation of several spacecraft (TESS, IBEX, and Spektr-R) in these regions is made, which shows good agreement with the simplified circular restricted three-body problem model.

  PublisherDOI

• Cislunar Mean-Motion Resonances: Definitions, Widths, and Comparisons with Resonant Satellites

  Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics · 2025-12-29 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Lunar mean-motion resonances (MMRs) significantly shape cislunar dynamics beyond geosynchronous orbit, forming stable/unstable orbit pairs with corresponding intermingled chaotic and regular regions. The resonance zone is rigorously defined using the separatrices of unstable resonant periodic orbits surrounding stable quasi-periodic regions. Our study leverages the planar circular restricted three-body problem to estimate the (stable) resonance widths and (unstable) chaotic resonance zones of influence of the 2:1 and 3:1 MMRs across various Jacobi constants, employing a Poincaré map at perigee and presenting findings in easily interpretable geocentric orbital elements. An analysis of the semi-major axis versus eccentricity plane reveals broader regions of resonance influence than those predicted by semi-analytical models based on the perturbed Kepler problem. A comparison with high-fidelity three-dimensional ephemeris propagation of several spacecraft (TESS, IBEX, and Spektr-R) in these regions is made, which shows good agreement with the simplified circular restricted three-body problem model.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cislunar Resonant Transport and Heteroclinic Pathways: From 3:1 to 2:1 to L1

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2025-09-16

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Understanding the dynamical structure of cislunar space beyond geosynchronous orbit is critical for both lunar exploration and for high-Earth-orbiting trajectories. In this study, we investigate the role of mean-motion resonances and their associated heteroclinic connections in enabling natural semi-major axis transport in the Earth-Moon system. Working within the planar circular restricted three-body problem, we compute and analyze families of periodic orbits associated with the interior 4:1, 3:1, and 2:1 lunar resonances. These families exhibit a rich bifurcation structure, including transitions between prograde and retrograde branches and connections through collision orbits. We construct stable and unstable manifolds of the unstable resonant orbits using a perigee-based Poincaré map, and identify heteroclinic connections - both between resonant orbits and with lunar $L_1$ libration-point orbits - across a range of Jacobi constant values. Using a new generalized distance metric to quantify the closeness between trajectories, we establish operational times-of-flight for such heteroclinic-type orbit-to-orbit transfers. These connections reveal ballistic, zero-$Δv$ pathways that achieve major orbit changes within reasonable times-of-flight, thus defining a network of accessible semi-major axes. Our results provide a new dynamical framework for long-term spacecraft evolution and cislunar mission design, particularly in regimes where lunar gravity strongly perturbs distant circumterrestrial orbits.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Monitoring wind and particle concentrations near freshwater and marine harmful algal blooms (HABs)

  Environmental Science Advances · 2024-11-22 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Ground-based sensors were used to study HAB-associated particles in the atmosphere, and a drone was used to measure vertical profiles of wind.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Atmospheric transport structures shaping the “Godzilla” dust plume

  Atmospheric Environment · 2024-06-12 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: A New Framework for Prediction of Buckling and Other Critical Transitions in Nonlinear Structural Mechanics

  NSF · $266k · 2015–2019

• Dynamical Mechanisms Influencing the Population Structure of Airborne Pathogens: Theory and Observations

  NSF · $430k · 2011–2014

• CAREER: Integrating Geometric, Probabilistic, and Topological Methods for Phase Space Transport in Dynamical Systems

  NSF · $433k · 2012–2018

• Collaborative Research: Flying snakes: fluid mechanics of deforming articulated bodies

  NSF · $320k · 2020–2025

• PostDoctoral Research Fellowship

  NSF · $108k · 2004–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Jerrold E. Marsden

  36 shared

• Wang Sang Koon

  California Institute of Technology

  33 shared

• David G. Schmale

  Virginia Tech

  25 shared

• Martín Tanaka

  Western Carolina University

  21 shared

• Martin W. Lo

  18 shared

• M. W. Lo

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  16 shared

• Hosein Foroutan

  11 shared

• Peter J. Nolan

  Virginia Tech

  11 shared

Labs

• The Ross Dynamics Lab at Virginia TechPI

Education

• PhD, Control and Dynamical Systems

  California Institute of Technology

  2004

• BS, Physics

  California Institute of Technology

  1998

Awards & honors

• 2017 Excellence in Research Award, Virginia Tech College of…
• 2017 Leader in Research Award, Virginia Tech Dept. of Biomed…
• 2012 Liviu Librescu Prize, Dept. of Engineering Science and…
• 2012 Faculty Fellow, Virginia Tech College of Engineering De…
• 2012 Certificate of Teaching Excellence, Virginia Tech Colle…