I believe that research not only brings imminence but also fosters innovation and solutions to real life engineering problems. I am interested in developing computational algorithms and supporting verification and validation techniques for thermo-fluid dynamics problems that are difficult to analyze. My focus is the multiphysics problems that are relevant to many real life applications and often involve multiscale both in temporal and spatial representations. These problems require a unique blend of skill areas that include (but not limited to) an in-depth understanding of chaotic and non-linear behavior of thermo-fluid dynamics; application of advanced numerical techniques; real-time programming on a massively parallel High Performance Computer (HPC) infrastructure; an in-depth understanding of several programming languages, environments, and standards; and last but not the least a collaborative team of interdisciplinary experts. My unique blend of these skills, because of my research experiences from several organizations and interdisciplinary projects make me a suitable candidate to perform such research that is critically important in the 21^st century context.

I believe in supporting graduate students funded through federal grants and engaging the students in scholarly and professional activities. With my extensive experience in several subareas of modeling, I established a Multi-physics Multi-scale Computational Fluid Dynamics Lab. My lab is focused on investigating multiphysics real life applications with existing computational techniques and developing new algorithms that are necessary to resolve multi-scale physics. My lab has supported many students (5 PhD – 4 graduated, 9 MS – 8 graduated, ~30 UG RAs) through several federal and state research grants.

I advocate “collaboration brings opportunities”. I have established strong collaborative partnerships with outside researchers from various universities, industries, and many national labs. The partners include researchers from the Shell Oil Company, Sandia National Labs (Sandia), National Energy Technology Labs (NETL), National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL), Air Force Research Labs (AFRL)/Kirtland Air Force Base (KAFB), and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). These collaborations have enabled me and my students to engage in cutting-edge research through various internships and visiting student & faculty scholar programs, including graduate students internships/visiting positions at Sandia and AFRL/KAFB, UG internships at NREL, doctoral research fellowship at NCAR in addition to several visiting professor engagements at the national Labs.

I believe in acquiring federal grants to support the engine of innovation and learning. My immediate research focus has been in energy (both clean/renewable and fossil) although I am broadening my areas into defense, medical, climate, and infrastructures areas and other related areas requiring in-depth understanding of fluid dynamics, numerical methods, and computational framework fundamentals. My proposals have been accepted by several agencies including the DOE, AFOSR, NSF, DOEd, TxDOT as demonstrated by acquisition of several grants, invitation to serve on proposal review committees, and visiting/consulting appointments.

My research group members have disseminated our research through several scholarly contributions and activities such as published peer reviewed conference proceedings and journal manuscripts, started the energy security and climate change seminar series, and contributed to the ASME & AIAA activities. I have also documented my contributions through books, reports and monographs. I believe in extracting educational materials from research for the UG and graduate classrooms to bring experiential-learning experiences and engage students in STEM career and life-long learning. More...