We’re a talented group with research expertise in modeling and measurements in thermal, fluid, and chemical sciences.

Principal Investigator

Rohini headshot

Rohini Bala Chandran

Assistant Professor

Rohini Bala Chandran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She obtained her B.S. (2008) from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS-Pilani), India, an M.S (2010) and a Ph.D. (2015) from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, all in Mechanical Engineering. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory between 2015–2017 in the Energy Storage & Distributed Resources division. Dr. Bala Chandran is a recipient of several awards including the Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer (2023), the NSF CAREER award (2022), the Doctoral New Investigator (DNI) award from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund, ACS-PRF (2021), and a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship at the University of Minnesota (2014–2015).

Ph.D. Students

Mike Mayer

Ph.D. Graduate, ME

Mike received his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018 and worked for a year at Los Alamos National Laboratory before starting his Ph.D. He is working on experimental techniques to measure radiative properties of materials at high temperatures and characterize heat transfer in high-temperature particle flows for sustainable energy systems. He recently defended his dissertation titled “Experimental Investigation of Radiative Properties and Heat Transfer in Particulate Media.”

Bingjia Li

Doctoral Candidate, ME

Bingjia earned his Bachelor’s in Building Environment & Energy Application Engineering from China University of Mining and Technology (2018). Currently, he is working on developing multimode heat transfer models including radiation for gas–solid multiphase flows.

Zijie Chen

Doctoral Candidate, ME

Zijie obtained her Bachelor’s in Building Environment & Energy Application Engineering from Shandong Jianzhu University in 2018. She is currently working on developing physics-based and data-driven models for radiative transport in particulate media and multiphase flows with solid particles. Zijie is a recipient of the Rackham International Fellowship and is a MICDE Fellow.

Rachel Silcox

Doctoral Candidate, ME

Rachel earned her Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from Valparaiso University in 2019. She worked for one year at a green hydrogen start-up company and as a statistics/environmental science teaching assistant at Pannasastra University of Cambodia, Siem Reap. For her Ph.D. work she is focusing on electrochemical modeling and flow reactor design and testing for ocean water carbon capture and water treatment applications. Rachel is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2021).

Rebecca Lentz

Doctoral Candidate, EECS

Rebecca earned her Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University in 2019. Currently, she is working on novel semiconductor water-splitting techniques for solar-hydrogen fuel generation. Rebecca is a recipient of the U-M ECE Department Merit Fellowship (2019).

Areefa Rahman

Doctoral Candidate, ChE

Areefa earned her Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry with a certificate in Environment and Sustainability from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021. She is currently working on designing and building a reactor for solar thermochemical hydrogen production.

Fernando Villavicencio

Doctoral Candidate, ME

Fernando received his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016 and worked at Ford Motor Company for 8 years before starting his Ph.D. He is working on flow reactor design for carbon capture from ocean water and modeling for nitrate and CO2 co-reduction to urea.

Master’s Students

Matt McMullen

ME 590 Student

Education: B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Villanova University (2024)

Research Focus: Modeling and evaluating the performance between micro and macro scale packed-bed salt hydrate composite reactors in thermochemical energy storage systems for use alongside renewable and electrochemical systems

Matthew Lajoie

ME 590 Student

Education: B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan (2024)

Research Focus: Measurements of heat transfer coefficients in high-temperature particle flows for solar thermal energy systems

Xinsheng “Teddy” Wei

ME 590 Student

Education: B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University (2024)

Research Focus: Investigation of high-temperature granular flow thermal behavior, optical and thermal measurement of radiative and conductive heat transfer

Namita Nene

ME 590 Student

Education: B.E. Mechanical Engineering, University of Mumbai (2023)

Research Focus: Design and CFD modeling of radial flow reactors for solar thermochemical water splitting.

Aldo Chipana

ME 590 Student

Education: B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Brigham Young University – Provo (2024)

Research Focus: Designing and building radial flow packed bed reactors for solar thermochemical water splitting.

Akshita Arora

ME 590 Student

Education: B.Tech. Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (2020)

Research Focus: Data-driven and machine learning modeling for radiative heat transfer in particulate media.

Undergraduate Students

Tavi Kipnis

RISE Student

Education: Major: Mechanical Engineering (Minor: Mathematics), University of Michigan (May 2025)

Research Focus: Flow cell and electrochemical testing for CO2 capture from seawater

Zhaokai Lin

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Education: Major: Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan; Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (UM-SJTU JI)

Research Focus: Foam photocatalysts for semiconductor water-splitting

Alumni

Postdoctoral Researchers

  1. Fangqi Chen (Jul. 2023 – Dec. 2024)
  2. Durga Ghosh (Apr. 2023 – Apr. 2024); subsequently postdoctoral scholar at North Carolina State University

Ph.D. Students

  1. Bryan Kinzer (Feb. 2020 – May 2024); subsequently Mechanical Engineer at Brayton Energy
  2. Luisa Barrera (Sep. 2017 – Dec. 2022); subsequently postdoctoral scholar at Georgia Institute of Technology
  3. Aditya Sundar (Dec. 2019 – Aug. 2022); co-advised PhD student; subsequently postdoctoral scholar at Argonne National Lab and computational materials scientist at Leidos

Master’s Students

  1. Neel Karani (Sep. 2024 – Dec. 2024), ME 590 Project (1 term)
  2. Praneet Chotalia (Jan. 2024 – May 2024), Research Assistant
  3. Fernando Villavicencio (Sep. 2023 – May 2024), ME 590 Project (2 terms); subsequently doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at UM
  4. Prathamesh Nakhate (Sep. 2023 – May 2024), ME 590 Project (2 terms); subsequently Advanced Systems Engineering Intern at BorgWarner
  5. Brandon Surhigh (May 2023 – May 2024), ME 590 Project and Research Assistant; subsequently at Airflow Sciences Corporation in Livonia, MI
  6. Sisir Sanagala (Oct. 2022 – Jul. 2023), ME 590 Project (2 terms)
  7. Sanjay Bharati (Jan. 2022 – Apr. 2022), ME 590 Project (1 term)
  8. James Abraham (Sep. 2020 – May 2021), ME 590 Project (2 terms); subsequently at Bosch
  9. Aishwarya Krishnan (Feb. 2019 – Dec. 2019), ME 590 Project and Research Assistant; subsequently CFD Engineer at Romeo Power in Los Angeles, CA and doctoral student at University of Southern California
  10. Kory Nelson (Sep. 2018 – Apr. 2019), ME 590 Project (2 terms); subsequently at GE Renewable Energy in Seattle, WA
  11. Fawaz Ali (May 2018 – Dec. 2018), ME 590 Project (1 term); subsequently doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at UM
  12. Yudong Chen (Sep. 2018 – Dec. 2018), ME 590 Project (1 term)
  13. Xingyu Zhou (Sep. 2018 – Dec. 2018), ME 590 Project (1 term)
  14. Chisang Park (May 2018 – Aug. 2018), Research Volunteer; subsequently doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at UM

Undergraduate Students

  1. Matt Lajoie (May 2024 – Dec. 2024), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  2. Sunaad Gurajada (Oct. 2023 – May 2024), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  3. Noah Walters (Sep. 2023 – May 2024), Aerospace Engineering undergraduate from UM; subsequently at Williams International in Pontiac, MI
  4. Declan Crowley (Apr. 2023 – Aug. 2023), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM, Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) – 2023 Cohort
  5. Arijit Jatkar (Feb. 2023 – Jun. 2023), Chemical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  6. Nikki France (Oct. 2022 – Apr. 2023), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; subsequently Master’s student at UM
  7. Brandon Surhigh (May 2022 – Apr. 2023), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM, Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) – 2022 Cohort; subsequently Master’s student at UM
  8. Yire Ahn (May 2022 – Dec. 2022), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM, Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) – 2022 Cohort
  9. Kate Giammalvo (Sep. 2021 – Aug. 2022), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; subsequently doctoral student at UM
  10. Theo Rulko (May 2021 – May 2022), Aerospace Engineering undergraduate from UM, Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) – 2021 Cohort; subsequently doctoral student at MIT
  11. Xingze Dai (Sep. 2020 – Apr. 2022), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; subsequently Master’s student at Stanford
  12. Emily Isip (Jan. 2021 – Aug. 2021), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  13. Thomas Mundy (Sep. 2020 – Dec. 2020), Nuclear Engineering undergraduate from UM; subsequently doctoral student at Imperial College London
  14. Abigail Overbeck (Sep. 2020 – Dec. 2020), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  15. Priyanna Patel (Jan. 2020 – Apr. 2020), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  16. Erika Brower (May 2018 – Apr. 2020), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; subsequently at ThermoLift in Novi, MI
  17. Connor Boerman (Sep. 2018 – Dec. 2019), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; subsequently at Blue Origin