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Principal Investigator
Dr. Sean Symon
I am currently an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton. For undergrad, I went to the University of Maryland College Park and graduated with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and a BA in French Language and Literature. I went to Caltech for an MS in Aeronautics and then spent a year in Paris at Ecole Polytechnique working towards a Masters in Fluid Mechanics. I returned to Caltech for my Ph.D. in Aeronautics with Beverley McKeon and then switched hemisphere for my post-doc at the University of Melbourne with Simon Illingworth and Ivan Marusic. I joined Southampton in September 2020.
Post-docs
PhD Students
Uttam Cadambi Padmanaban
Co-supervisor: Prof. Bharath Ganapathisubramani
Uttam completed his MSc in Aerospace Engineering with a specialization in Aerodynamics and Wind Energy from TU Delft. He is currently investigating the variational method of performing data assimilation for 3D turbulent flows with flow separation.
In his free time, he likes watching cricket, football and tennis and supports the Premier League club, Liverpool F. C.
Email: ucp1n22@soton.ac.uk
Martina Formichetti
Co-supervisor: Prof. Bharath Ganapathisubramani
Martina graduated from the University of Glasgow with a BEng in Aeronautical Engineering and from KTH The Royal Institute of Technology with an MSc in Fluid Mechanics. She is currently studying a novel way to model the effect of heterogeneously rough surfaces on turbulent boundary layers via experimental techniques and data assimilation.
Email: martina.formichetti@soton.ac.uk
Christian Toma
Co-supervisor: Prof. Bharath Ganapathisubramani
Christian completed his MEng in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southampton with a specialisation in aerodynamics. Currently, he is investigating the application of physics-informed neural networks to experimental fluids and network generalisation techniques.
Before returning to Southampton, Christian founded a startup developing machine learning models for real-time optimisation of offshore wind farm control systems.
Email: christian.toma@soton.ac.uk
Ihab Alkhaldi
Co-supervisor: Prof. Bharath Ganapathisubramani
Ihab has completed his MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Portsmouth and is currently investigating convective heat transfer in turbulent boundary layers.
In his free time he enjoys playing tennis and swimming.
Email: ia1n24@soton.ac.uk
Joshua Rawden
Co-supervisor: Prof. Christina Vanderwel
Joshua completed his MEng in 2024 with a specialisation in aerodynamics. His research involves the study and prediction of pollution dispersion in urban environments, using physics-informed neural networks and data assimilation.
Email: jr1g20@soton.ac.uk
Richard Crewe
Co-supervisor: Dr. Melike Kurt
Richard completed his MEng Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2025 from the University of Southampton. His research involves predicting acoustics for marine applications.
Email: rpc1g21@soton.ac.uk
MSc Students
Alumni
Post-docs
Dr. Samaresh Midya
Samaresh was a Research Fellow in Experimental Fluid Dynamics at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 2023 to 2025. He did his doctoral studies at the Institute for Flow Physics and Control at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests focus mainly on experimental and theoretical studies of wall-bounded turbulence, wake turbulence, plasma flow control, and solar energy.
PhD students
Dr. Thomas Burton
Co-supervisor: Dr. Davide Lasagna
Thomas completed his MEng in AeroAstro at the University of Southampton. He defended his PhD thesis entitled, "Resolvent-based models for nonlinear solutions and statistical estimation of turbulence," in February 2025.
Current position: post-doc at University of Southampton.
Dr. Craig Thompson
Co-supervisor: Prof. Bharath Ganapathisubramani
Craig completed his MEng in AeroAstro at the University of Southampton. He defended his PhD thesis entitled, "A comprehension and prediction of wings in unsteady conditions," in August 2024.
Current position: post-doc at Imperial College London.
MSc Students
Ben Purkis - MSc Aerodynamics and Computation: Experimental pressure measurements of an automobile-like bluff body
Zhaoqi He - MSc Aerodynamics and Computation: Modelling three-dimensional vehicle wakes from experimental data
Luka Cepic - MSc Aerodynamics and Computation: Accelerating physics-informed neural networks using transfer learning for Reynolds number scaling
Owain Brinkworth - MSc Race Car Aerodynamics: Using data assimilation to extrapolate mean flow over a double element rear wing - currently at Aston Martin F1
Levon Oganesyan - MSc Aerodynamics and Computation: Aerodynamics of multi-element wings on race cars using CFD and sparse wind tunnel data - currently an adjunct lecturer at American University of Armenia
Youming Meng - MSc Race Car Aerodynamics: Shallow neural networks for reconstructing the flow around aerofoils at various angles of attack
Tyler Buchanan - MSc Race Car Aerodynamics: Towards characterising the aerodynamics of race cars from sparse wind tunnel data - currently a PhD Student at TUDelft
Summer Interns
Freddie Ellis - MEng student - Unsteady flow reconstruction using PINN's
Michael Presland* - MEng student - Decoding sparse pollution data in Hampshire
Joshua Rawden* - MEng student - Physics-informed neural networks for predicting mean velocity and temperature fields
Yi Teng Teo* - MEng student - Reduced-order modelling of urban air pollution flows
*Co-supervised with Professor Christina Vanderwel
PGCert
Dimitar Geshev
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