Teaching & Mentoring

Teaching Philosophy

The ability to model, predict and optimize fluid flow phenomena in science and engineering is rapidly progressing and expanding into a wide range of multidisciplinary, pioneering applications. At present, Fluid Mechanics engineers are creating new technologies that impact upon every aspect of our lives, designing and manufacturing from aerospace vehicles and new energy-efficient systems to biomedical and nano/micro-scale devices. In this context, my view is that the most successful engineers are the ones able to design systems that combine technological ability with innovative thinking to generate positive socioeconomic impacts. Hence, the new breed of engineers need to (i) have a very strong foundational knowledge to ground their ideas, (ii) hands-on experience on solving real-world, multidisciplinary problems, (iii) the imagination to develop new technologies, (iv) awareness of the major societal concerns to drive research and technology, and (v) excellent communication skills to facilitate their effective and successful interaction with colleagues and collaborators.

One common challenge with teaching science and engineering is keeping lessons comprehensible and exciting while maintaining high standards of education. Often, students struggle with the linkage of scientific concepts to the applied problems. Fluid mechanics can feel very abstract, since many have trouble seeing a connection between mathematical theory and physics phenomena. My approach to overcome this difficulty is to start always by motivating the concepts with very simple examples. Once the underlying notions are understood and interiorized, I then proceed to describe them by means of mathematical abstractions to formalize the concepts introduced.

In conjunction with hands-on lectures in laboratories to motivate and facilitate the understanding of complex concepts and their connection with real applications, I truly believe in the importance of substantiating the courses on the basis of good textbooks as they provide excellent support for the reinforcement and extension of the students’ theoretical and practical (through exercises) knowledge.

Finally, an important additional piece that I believe is becoming more and more important in the nowadays global society is to expose students to novel methodologies, ideas and technologies by (i) inviting personnel from research institutes, industry and academia to seminars and workshops, (ii) promoting industrial/research internships, and (iii) by directly encouraging students to participate in introductory research activities.

Teaching & Mentoring Activities

  • 2020 - Present | Mentoring students: Fluid Mechanics research on multiscale/physics flow phenomena, reduced-order modeling, data science, UQ, and computational science and engineering. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC), Spain


  • 2020 - Present | Professor: Thermodynamics & Heat Transfer, Systems Modeling. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (EEBE), Spain


  • 2018 - 2020 | Mentoring students: Fluid Mechanics research on multiscale/physics flow phenomena, reduced-order modeling, data science, predictive science and engineering, and advanced simulation and computing. Stanford University, USA


  • 2018 - 2020 | co-Instructor graduate course: ME469 - Computational Methods in Fluid Mechanics. Stanford University, USA


  • 2016 | Tutorial CTR 16th Biennal Summer Program: High-Pressure Transcritical Atomization Flow Physics and Modeling. Stanford University, USA


  • 2015 | Tutorial Exascale Engineering Center: Porting a Pressure-Based Flow Solver to the Liszt DSL. Stanford University, USA


  • 2014 - 2015 | Mentoring students: Fluid Mechanics research on turbulent two-phase flow physics and modeling. Technical University of Catalonia - BarcelonaTech (UPC), Spain


  • 2012 - 2014 | Instructor graduate workshop: Computational Heat and Mass Transfer Methods. Technical University of Catalonia - BarcelonaTech (UPC), Spain


  • 2008 - 2009 | Teaching assistant: Jet Propulsion Engines Laboratory. Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden