Spotlights on Research
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Professor, Physics
Some current projects are:
- Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics
- Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics
- Phase transitions and critical phenomena
- Driven diffusive systems
- Vacancy-mediated dynamics
- Percolation and stochastic evolution models
- Field theory and renormalization group analyses
- Monte Carlo simulation techniques
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Some current projects are:
- Large systems driven far from equilibrium
- Spatiotemporal chaos and nonlinear dynamics
- Nanoscale physics for biological applications
- Modeling biological systems
- Large scale scientific computation
Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Some current projects are:
-
Air-side heat transfer enhancement in compact heat exchangers: Compact heat
exchangers are used extensively in the automobile, aerospace, and
Heating, Ventilation & Air-Conditioning (HVAC) industries. The
performance of heat exchangers is limited by the air-side heat transfer
coefficient. The research aims at understanding the performance of
different augmentation surfaces through the use of high fidelity
computer simulations.
-
Multi-physics computations in micron scale (10-6 m) devices: Micron
scale devices have important applications in medicine, aerospace, and
other emerging industries. Flow of gases and liquids in micron scale
devices exhibit a range of phenomena not encountered in large scale
devices. Our research is developing computational tools for simulating
electro-osmotic and electrophoretic effects for lab-on-a-chip
applications.
-
Terascale Computing in Computational Fluid Dynamics: Unprecedented
advances have been made in computer hardware with the ability to put
together hundreds or thousands of processors in geographically
distributed clusters on a GRID with high bandwidth networks. Our
research aims at developing computational fluid dynamics simulation
software, which can take advantage of these distributed facilities for
computations, data archiving, visualization and analysis.
-
Enhanced prediction techniques for internal cooling of turbine
blades: Turbine blades are subjected to very high temperatures and have
to be cooled internally by passing cooling air through roughened
serpentine channels. Our research is evaluating and developing enhanced
prediction techniques based on large-scale time-accurate simulations of
the highly turbulent flow and heat transfer under the effects of
rotation and buoyancy forces.
Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
Some current projects are:
- Atomistic computer simulation
- New intermetallic alloys
- Defect structures
- Interfaces
- Diffusion
Associate Professor, Chemistry
Some current projects are:
- The construction of diagnostics for testing the completeness/adequacy of
the one-electron basis sets used in quantum calculations.
- The development of "reduced scaling" equation-of-motion coupled cluster techniques for excited states of large molecules.
- Design of multireference methods for treating artifactual and real symmetry breaking problems.
- Computations of optical rotation angles and simulations of circular dichroism spectra for chiral molecules.
