Professor Powell is a member and past director of the W. M. Keck Foundation Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and a co-founder and co-director of the Center for Space Environment Modeling and the the Center for Radiative Shock Hydrodynamics.

At the undergraduate level, he teaches freshman computing, compressible flow, aerodynamics and aircraft design; at the graduate level, he teaches aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics.

His research interests include: algorithm development for fluid dynamics, aerodynamics and plasmadynamics; and the application of computational methods to problems in aerodynamics, aeroelasticity, fluid dynamics and space environment/space weather.

His articles appear in Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Journal of Computational Physics, and Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, among others. He is also a co-author of Multi-Media Fluid Mechanics.

He has received a number of awards for his research, including a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, and a number of awards for his teaching, including the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship.

He is married to Susanne Maria Krummel; they have three children: Jasmine, Ryan and Nicole.

He was elected as member of the Euorpean Academy of Engineering in 2020.