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

Principal Investigator

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).

Postdoctoral Fellows

Durga Prasad Ghosh

Durga received his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Patna (2019), where he worked on flow boiling in nanostructured microchannels.  He has designed and demonstrated experimental techniques to mitigate thermohydraulic fluctuations during flow boiling in microchannels. Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Oregon State University from December 2019 to March 2023 on Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) thermal desalination systems. His current research work focuses on experimental testing/development for thermochemical energy storage and heat-transfer characterization of gas–solid multiphase flows.

Fangqi Chen

Fangqi received his Ph.D. from Northeastern University, Boston (2023), where he worked on nanoscale heat transfer and selective emitters for visible and infrared applications. His current research goal is to develop multiscale, multiphysics models to understand and evaluate optical, electrochemical, and photocatalytic behavior of solar water splitting reactors for hydrogen production.

Ph.D. Students

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.

Mike Mayer

Doctoral Candidate, 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.

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.

Bryan Kinzer

Doctoral Candidate, ME

Bryan earned his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tulsa in 2017 and then headed off to Lesotho for a year as a Fulbright Scholar to help electrify rural villages. He is currently working on modeling high-temperature alloys for next-generation power plants and working on modeling and measurements for thermochemical energy storage.

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).

Master’s Students

Brandon Surhigh

ME SUGS Student

Education: B.S. Mechanical Engineering (Minor: Computer Science), University of Michigan (2023)

Research Focus: Radiative property measurements, high-temperature experiments and diagnostics

Prathamesh Nakhate

ME 590 Student

Education: B.Tech. Mechanical Engineering (Minor: Systems and Control Engineering), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (2023)

Research Focus: Particle-fluid multiphase flow modeling, CFD-DEM

Undergraduate Students

Tavi Kipnis

RISE Student

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

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

Alumni

Ph.D. Students

  1. Luisa Barrera (Sep. 2017 – Dec. 2022); presently postdoctoral scholar at Georgia Institute of Technology
  2. Aditya Sundar (Dec. 2019 – Aug. 2022), co-advised PhD student; presently postdoctoral scholar at Argonne National Lab

Master’s Students

  1. Sisir Sanagala (Oct. 2022 – Jul. 2023), ME 590 Project (2 terms)
  2. Sanjay Bharati (Jan. 2022 – Apr. 2022), ME 590 Project (1 term)
  3. James Abraham (Sep. 2020 – May 2021), ME 590 Project (2 terms); presently at Bosch
  4. Aishwarya Krishnan (Feb. – Dec. 2019), ME 590 Project and Research Assistant; presently CFD Engineer at Romeo Power, Los Angeles, CA
  5. Kory Nelson (Sep. 2018 – Apr. 2019), ME 590 Project (2 terms); presently at GE Renewable Energy in their Grid Solutions team, Seattle, WA
  6. Fawaz Ali (May – Dec. 2018), ME 590 Project (1 term); former doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at UM
  7. Yudong Chen (Sep. – Dec. 2018), ME 590 Project (1 term)
  8. Xingyu Zhou (Sep. – Dec. 2018), ME 590 Project (1 term)
  9. Chisang Park (May – Aug. 2018), Research Volunteer; presently doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at UM

Undergraduate Students

  1. Noah Walters (Sep. 2023 – May 2024), Aerospace Engineering undergraduate from UM, presently at Williams International, Pontiac, Michigan
  2. Declan Crowley (Apr. 2023 – Aug. 2023), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM, Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) – 2023 Cohort
  3. Arijit Jatkar (Feb. 2023 – Jun. 2023), Chemical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  4. Nikki France (Oct. 2022 – Apr. 2023), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM, presently Master’s student at UM
  5. Yire Ahn (May – Dec. 2022), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM, Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) – 2022 Cohort
  6. Kate Giammalvo (Sep. 2021 – Aug. 2022), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; presently doctoral student at UM
  7. Theo Rulko (May 2021 – May 2022), Aerospace Engineering undergraduate from UM, Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) – 2021 Cohort; presently doctoral student at MIT
  8. Xingze Dai (Sep. 2020 – Apr. 2022), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; presently Master’s student at Stanford
  9. Emily Isip (Jan. 2021 – Aug. 2021), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  10. Priyanna Patel (Jan. – Apr. 2020), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM
  11. Erika Brower (May 2018 – Apr. 2020), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; presently at ThermoLift, Livonia, Michigan
  12. Connor Boerman (Sep. 2018 – Dec. 2019), Mechanical Engineering undergraduate from UM; presently at Blue Origin