When Mark Drela first set foot in Cambridge to study aerospace engineering at MIT in 1978, he was no stranger to wind tunnels. Just two years before, he constructed a 1-foot-by-1-foot wind tunnel for the Westinghouse Science Talent Search that earned him a visit to the White House as a finalist. But nothing could have prepared him for the first time he saw the iconic Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel, a moment that would tie into his later career and eventually impact the very fabric of MIT’s campus. “It was my…
