John Henry Lienhard V (born 1961) is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[2] He then transferred to the University of California, San Diego, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on wind tunnel measurements of strongly stratified turbulent flow, finishing in 1988.

[3] Lienhard's doctoral experiments encompassed Brunt–Väisälä frequencies up to 2.4 s−1 and required the development of hot-wire anemometry usable in the presence of large temperature fluctuations.

This work included fundamental convection problems, droplet splattering, free-surface turbulence interactions, and pattern-formation in the hydraulic jump.

In 1993, Lienhard's group reported the highest steady-state fluxes to that date removed from a macroscopic area, achieved using a high-speed water jet (≈40 kW/cm2).

He approached this area through his background in thermal engineering and transport phenomena, making energy efficiency a central aim.

[20] J-WAFS funds diverse research on water and food, across all of MIT's schools, to address the needs of a rapidly growing population on a changing planet.