After a three-year break, TsAGI has again become a member of the Supersonic Tunnel Association, International. This took place at the 116^th regular meeting of STAI. The conference was held on September 18–20, 2011 in Novosibirsk, at the Khristianovich Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics SB RAS.

The Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute was a member of the association from 2003 to 2009; in 2006 TsAGI hosted the 106^th meeting of STAI in Moscow. This year the institute’s management decided to renew TsAGI’s membership of the association.

In line with standard procedure, the institute received an invitation to the regular meeting, at which the head of the delegation, TsAGI Executive Director Sergey Chernyshev, made a presentation of the institute’s experimental base. The meeting’s participants voted unanimously for TsAGI to be accepted as a member of the association, and stressed the importance to STAI of having such a prestigious organization as a member, and expressed the hope that our institute would make a significant contribution to STAI’s work.

“By joining the ranks of the association, our institute once again receives the opportunity to receive valuable information from firsthand sources about what work they are doing, what problems they are resolving and how specialists and scientists plan to develop experimental techniques and methods in aerodynamic laboratories around the world,” Sergey Chernyshev said.

STAI is an informal non-profit organization that unites specialists designing and operating high speed aerodynamic tunnels and developing methods for tunnel experiments. The association was set up in 1954 and holds meetings on a regular basis — twice a year — which are hosted in turn by one of the member organizations.

The meetings between association members are a platform that provides specialists in experiments with high speed aerodynamic tunnels with an informal setting to share their experiences, and talk about their achievements, plans and problems. Materials from these meetings are only distributed among STAI members.

At the moment STAI includes over 30 organizations from the USA, Europe, Canada, China, Russia, Australia, Japan and other countries.