July:
My Ph.D. Student, Aidan Lay, presented his undergraduate research on "The Fluid Dynamics Uncertainty Quantification Challenge Problem: XFOIL vs. mfoil" at the 2025 AIAA Aviation Forum. This work is in collaboration with my Ph.D. Student, Justin Weinmeister.
May:
SCFDL hosted one NSF-REU student, Tor Burwell (University of Colorado Boulder), and one Collaborative REU student, Chayapat Bunterngsook (City University of Hong Kong), for the next 10 weeks to do shape optimization of cargo casings for delivery drones.
Congratulations, Aidan Lay, for receiving the UTK Graduate School Fellowship! This fellowship provides $10,000/year for 4 years.
Congratulations, Aidan Lay, for earning your B.S. in Mechanical Engineering! SCFDL is excited to welcome you as a direct Ph.D. Student.
April:
My Ph.D. Student, Justin Weinmeister, presented his work on "An Open-Source Python Package for CFD Solution Verification" at ASME VVUQ 2025.
March:
I was invited to serve as a panelist for "WeLEAP Future Faculty Development Series: Succeeding in Faculty Jobs" hosted by WeLEAP and MIT RPA^3 (Researchers and Postdocs Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics).
February:
I was invited to give a talk on "Understanding the Role of High-Order Nodes in Finite-Element Meshes" at the Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing (NASC) RTG Research Seminar at Rice University.
January:
I assumed the role as the Chair of the MVCE Student Paper Competition for the 2026 AIAA SciTech Forum. I landed Flexcompute sponsorship for the competition.
I successfully completed my service as the Technical Discipline Chair of MVCE for the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum. Through this role, I created joint sessions with APA, ASE, CFD2030, FD, MDO, and NDA and significantly increased paper counts submitted to MVCE (44 papers and 9 sessions).
My Ph.D. Student, Trenton Henderson, presented his work on "Neural-Network Surrogate Model for Flow Stability Analysis Based on Parabolized Stability Equations" at the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum. This work is in collaboration with Dr. Gustavo L.O. Halila and Prof. James G. Coder.
I attended the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum and presented our paper, "Error Sampling and Synthesis for High-Order Node Movement". This work is in collaboration with Dr. Ajay Rangarajan and Prof. Carl F. Ollivier-Gooch. I also co-chaired MVCE-03: High-Order Mesh Adaptation and HPC and MVCE-10/APA-67/CFD2030-08: CFD on Large-Scale Meshes for Applied Aerodynamics.
December:
I was invited to give a talk on "A Path to High-Order CFD on Optimally Curved Meshes" at the Jameson-Kim-Wang Symposium (An international symposium in honor of Antony Jameson's 90th birthday in conjunction with Chongam Kim and Z.J. Wang's 60th birthdays). [Group Photo]
September:
My proposal to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Computational Math Program was selected for funding. This fund will be used to build a generalized optimization framework for high-order, metric-based mesh adaptation of high-order, finite-element discretization.
My Undergraduate Research Assistant, Aidan Lay, was awarded MABE UGRA Scholarship to study uncertainty quantification and machine learning for CFD.
July:
My Ph.D. Student, Nicole Nutter, received the AIAA Best Student Paper Award in CFD - 2nd Place at the 2024 AIAA Aviation Forum. She won this award for her work on "Thermochemical Nonequilibrium Modeling in a Continuous-Galerkin, Finite-Element Framework". This work is in collaboration with researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
My Ph.D. Student, Justin Weinmeister, presented his work on "Comparison of Full-Field and Integrated CFD Convergence Based on Richardson Extrapolation" at the 2024 AIAA Aviation Forum.
My Ph.D. Student, Justin Weinmeister, was selected to join the ASME VVUQ-20 Standards Subcommittee on VVUQ in CFD and Heat Transfer.
SCFDL hosted four HITES12 students to do aerodynamics research for formation flight, funded by the Office of Naval Research.
I successfully co-organized a mini-symposium with Dr. Steven Rodriguez (Naval Research Laboratory), titled "WCD: Advances in Methods Development for Computational Physics," at SIAM AN24. I also presented my work, titled "The Quest for High-Quality, High-Order Meshes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly."
May:
SCFDL hosted an REU student, Michael Sutton (Tennessee Technological University), for the next 10 weeks to do aerodynamics research for improving the versatility of drones, funded by the National Science Foundation.
I was selected to be the Meshing Sub-committee Chair of AIAA MVCE Technical Committee.
My Ph.D. Student, Trenton Henderson, earned a course-based M.S. in Aerospace Engineering.
Congratulations, Thomas Scott, for earning your B.S. in Mechanical Engineering! SCFDL wishes you the best for your next journey as a Ph.D. Student in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin with Prof. Tan Bui-Thanh.
My Undergraduate Research Assistant, Aidan Lay, was accepted to a summer research program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
My Ph.D. Student, Justin Weinmeister, presented his work on "Successive Procedure for Solution Verification Based on User Needs" at ASME VVUQ 2024.
April:
My Ph.D. Student, Trenton Henderson, was awarded the 2024 NSF Graduate Fellowship.
My Undergraduate Research Assistant, Thomas Scott, was invited to do summer research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
March:
My mentee, Austin Fisher, was selected to participate in Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
I was selected to serve as a reviewer for the AIAA Diversity Scholars Program.
February:
SCFDL welcomed two Undergraduate Research Assistants, Jackson Dendy and Aidan Lay.
I was invited as a guest speaker for Aviation Genius Hour at L&N STEM Academy.
January:
I assumed the role as the Technical Discipline Chair of MVCE for the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum.
I successfully completed my service as the Deputy Technical Discipline Chair of MVCE for the 2024 AIAA SciTech Forum. Through this role, I created joint sessions with CFD2030 and FD.
I attended the 2024 AIAA SciTech Forum and presented our paper, "Warped-Element Refinement Method for Fluid Simulation with Moving or Deforming Domains". I also co-chaired CFD2030-04/MVCE-08: Large-Scale Meshes for Complex Aircraft Configurations.
December:
Congratulations, Michael Davis, for earning your B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Aerospace Engineering! SCFDL wishes you the best for your next journey as an M.Sc. Student in Race Car Aerodynamics at the University of Southampton, UK.
November:
I was invited to give a seminar on "Exploiting the Synergistic Relationship between Vertex and High-Order Node Movements in High-Order, Finite-Element Meshes for Efficient Computational Fluid Dynamics" at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
October:
I was selected to serve as a Voting Member of AIAA Geometry Modelling for Computational Simulation (GMCS) Committee on Standards (CoS).
I was invited to give a lecture at L&N STEM Academy's Aerospace Day.
September:
I was invited to give a talk on "Designing Global, High-Order (Curved) Mesh Optimization Algorithms for Efficient Computational Fluid Dynamics on HPC" at ICL Friday Lunch Talk.
SCFDL welcomed an Undergraduate Research Assistant, Michael Davis.
August:
I completed the UTK Office of the Provost Research Development Academy (RDA).
My Undergraduate Research Assistant, Thomas Scott, landed a part-time position as a software developer at Mclaurin Aerospace.
July:
SCFDL hosted two high school students to do computational research for naval applications, funded by the Office of Naval Research.
I created a summer mini-course for high school teachers on "Advanced Air Mobility for Naval Applications," funded by the Office of Naval Research.
May:
I was featured by SIAM for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. The news article can be found here.
April:
My. M.S. Student, Luc Lipcius, successfully defended his M.S. Research Project. This project is for partial fulfillment of the requirements for M.S. in Aerospace Engineering. He will be an Operations Engineer at Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation.
March:
My Undergraduate Research Assistant, Thomas Scott, was named the 2023 Foster Fellow.
I was invited to serve as a poster judge at the 2023 MICDE symposium at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
February:
I was invited to serve as a guest co-editor of Processes (open-access journal) for a special issue on Machine Learning, Control, and Optimization in Manufacturing and Industry 4.0.
SCFDL welcomed a Ph.D. Student, Nicole Nutter.
January:
I was one of eight early-career applied mathematicians in the United States who was awarded the 2023 MGB-SIAM Early Career Fellowship.
I was selected to serve as the ABET course coordinators for AE 201 (Aerospace Seminar) and ME 391/397 (Engineering Analysis).
I was invited to give a talk on "Global Mesh Optimization for Computational Fluid Dynamics" at the Intelligent and Bio-inspired Mechanics (IBiM) seminar.
I assumed the role as the Deputy Technical Discipline Chair of MVCE for the 2024 AIAA SciTech Forum.
I attended the 2023 AIAA SciTech Forum and presented our paper, "High-Order Node Movement Discretization Error Control in Shape Optimization". I also chaired MVCE-02: Geometry Modeling and Mesh Generation.
December:
I served on Hang Wang's Ph.D. Dissertation committee. His dissertation is on "Space-Angle Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Method for Radiative Transfer Equation".
September:
SCFDL welcomed an Undergraduate Research Assistant, Thomas Scott. Thomas was awarded MABE UGRA to study machine learning for high-order mesh adaptation.
July:
I served on Jared Carnes' Ph.D. Dissertation committee. His dissertation is on "Predictive Capabilities of Laminar-Turbulent Transition Models for Aerodynamics Applications".
SCFDL welcomed a Ph.D. Student, Justin Weinmeister.
May:
I was selected to join the UTK Office of the Provost Research Development Academy (RDA).
I attended and presented my work on "Global Mesh Optimization: Is it Worth the Cost?" at the 2022 Midwest Numerical Analysis Day.
I was selected to be the Meshing Sub-committee Deputy Chair of AIAA MVCE Technical Committee.
Congratulations, Trenton Henderson, for receiving the UTK Graduate School Fellowship! This fellowship provides $10,000/year for 4 years.
Congratulations, Trenton Henderson, for earning your B.S. in Aerospace Engineering! SCFDL is excited to welcome you as a direct Ph.D. Student.
SCFDL welcomed two Undergraduate Research Assistants, Even Hals and Noah Jagielski.
I served on Forrest Mobley's M.S. Thesis committee. His thesis is on "Analysis of Turbulent Flow Behavior in Helicopter Rotor Hub Wake Predictions".
April:
I served on Liet Vo's Ph.D. Dissertation committee. His dissertation is on "Numerical Methods for Stochastic Stokes and Navier-Stokes Equations".
February:
I was invited to give a virtual seminar on "Exploring High-Order Mesh Adaptation and Optimization Algorithms: Fundamentals and Applications" at the University of Notre Dame.
I was invited to be a panelist for Teaching & Learning Innovation workshop, titled "Supporting International Faculty with Teaching at UTK".
December:
Our paper, "A Review and Comparison of Error Estimators for Anisotropic Mesh Adaptation for Flow Simulations", was accepted for publication in Computers & Fluids. I co-authored this paper with researchers at the NASA Langley Research Center, RWTH Aachen, and von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics.
November:
I was selected to serve in MABE Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and Energy Storage Faculty Search.
August:
SCFDL welcomed an Undergraduate Research Assistant, Colby Warden.
May:
I was selected to join the AIAA Meshing, Visualization, and Computational Environments (MVCE) Technical Committee.
March:
I virtually presented my work titled, "Metric-Based Mesh Optimization Strategy for High-Order, Finite-Element Meshes," at SIAM CSE 21. I was invited by Prof. Matthew Zahr (University of Notre Dame), Dr. Andrew Corrigan (Naval Research Laboratory), and Dr. Andrew Kercher (Naval Research Laboratory). I also served as a poster judge.
September:
I was selected to serve in MABE DEI committee.
May:
I was selected to serve in the Tickle College of Engineering Diversity Action Plan.
My mentee in the UTK 1794 Scholars Program, Nicholas Crowder, won the best poster presentation award (1st-place) for campus involvement category.
January:
SCFDL welcomed three undergraduate research assistants, Trenton Henderson, Makaela Sides, and Caleb Ross.
I was selected to serve in MABE Heat Transfer Faculty Search.
I attended the 2020 AIAA SciTech Forum and presented our paper, "Comparison of Algorithms for High-Order, Metric-Based Mesh Optimization". I also co-chaired FD-32 - CFD Methods IV.
December:
I was selected to serve in MABE Awards Committee.
November:
I served on Jared Carnes' M.S. Thesis committee. His thesis is on "Computational Fluid Dynamics Assessment on Laminar-Turbulent Boundary Layer Transition and its Application to Rotorcraft".
October:
I created and delivered diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) seminar for undergraduate aerospace engineering students.
September:
I was invited to give a talk at AIAA Research "Eat, Meet, and Greet" Event at UTK.
August:
My Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and Scientific Computing from the University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor, was conferred.
I started my appointment as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering in MABE Department at UTK.
July:
I was invited for a research collaboration with Dr. Scott Murman's group in at the NASA Ames Research Center as a Visiting Scientist.
I started my appointment as a Research Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering in MABE Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK).