Faculty of Fluid Mechanics, Combustion and Engineering Physics

Farhat Beg received his Ph.D. in Experimental Plasma Physics from the Imperial College, London in 1995.  He was a Research Associate and then a Research Fellow at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College from 1996-2003 where he worked on a variety of Z-pinch configurations and short pulse high intensity laser solid interactions.  His main interest was the study of high energy (> 10 MeV) particles and magnetic field (> 400 Mgaus) generation from such interactions.

His recent research interests include Fast Ignition for Inertial Confinement Fusion, wire array Z-pinches, compact x-ray and neutron sources for applications in medicine, science and industry.  He has served as a reviewer to several international journals on Plasma Physics. He is a member of the American Physical Society.

Steven G. Buckley received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Following this, he served as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. From 1999-2003 he was on the faculty of the University of Maryland in College Park. He joined the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering faculty at UCSD in 2003. Professor Buckley's research is centered in combustion, combustion and process diagnostics, and air pollution control and minimization. Much of his research involves the development and application of real-time, in situ sensors for chemical species and airborne particulate matter applicable to a wide range of basic and applied problems.

Robert J. Cattolica received his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1973. After a two-year NSF postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley, he joined the Sandia National Laboratories. As a member of the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia, he became a Distinguished Member of the technical staff. He has been on the faculty at UCSD since 1990. His research interests include laser and electron beam spectroscopic diagnostics, molecular energy transfer, combustion, and hypersonic gas dynamics.

Professional Distinctions:

• NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, 1973-75
• Associate Fellow of AIAA
• 1985 AIAA Best Paper in Thermal Physics Research

Robert W. Conn received his Ph.D. degree in engineering science from the Caltech in 1968. He joined UCLA in 1980 as a professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering and served as co-director of the Center for Plasma Physics and Fusion Engineering (1982-87). He is the current dean of the School of Engineering at UCSD. Areas of research include applied plasma physics and technology, fusion energy, fusion reactor design, methods for semiconductor etching and deposition processes, plasma chemistry, and applied chemical physics.

Professional Distinctions:

• Fellow of American Nuclear and American Physical Societies
• Member of the International Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for the ITER project
• Co-founder and Member, Board of Plasma & Materials Technologies, Inc.
• Elected National Academy of Engineering, 1987
• Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award, U.S. Department of Energy, 1984
• Walter J. Zable Chair, 1994

Dr Davis received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics at the University of Cambridge in 1964.  He was an applied mathematics faculty member for about 20 years at each of University College London and the University of Alabama and has emeritus status at both institutions.  He has published extensively and continues to research in surface gravity, ocean, acoustic and electromagnetic wave scattering and in low Reynolds number hydrodynamics.  He relocated and joined MAE in December 2006

Carl H. Gibson received his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 1962. He then joined the Peace Corps and served as a volunteer for two years in the Chemical Technology Department, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. After a brief period at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, he joined UCSD in 1965 and is now professor of engineering physics and oceanography in the Departments of MAE and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His research focus is on turbulence and turbulent mixing theory, with experiments in the laboratory, computer, atmosphere, and ocean. Recent applications have been to turbulence constrained by magnetic fields, stratification and rotation, the development of fossil turbulence theory, and the effects of turbulence on star formation and phytoplankton growth.

Professional Distinctions:

• Planning Committee and Acting Provost of Warren College
• Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1975
• Invited on Soviet cruises Dmitri Mendeleev 11 (1974), Akademic Kurchatov 51 (1990), Mstislav Keldysh 27 (1992)

Professor Gille earned a BS in physics at Yale and a PhD in physical oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program. She did postdoctoral research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and at the University of East Anglia, and was a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine. She joined the UCSD faculty in July 2000 and holds a joint appointment at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Prof. Goddard received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962. He joined the chemical engineering faculty of the University of Michigan in 1963, and in 1976 he accepted the position of Fluor Professor and Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Southern California . He has been a professor at UCSD since 1991.

Professional Distinctions:

• NATO, NSF and Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowships, 1963-84.
• Fluor Professor of Chemical Engineering, USC, 1976-91.
• D.L. Katz Lecturer, University of Michigan, 1983.
• President, U.S. Society of Rheology, 1991-93

Current Research and Publication

Jan Kleissl received a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University in 2004. Following this, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Michigan Technological University and at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. He will join the faculty of the Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in November 2006. His research interests are atmospheric boundary layer meteorology, subgrid-scale modeling for Large Eddy Simulation, and micrometeorology.

Sergei I. Krasheninnikov received his Ph.D. in 1980 and Doctor in Physics and Mathematics in 1992 from the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, Moscow, Russia. He held positions of Leading Scientist at Kurchatov Institute and Senior Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined Department of MAE at UCSD in 1999 as a professor of engineering physics. Areas of research include plasma, neutral, and radiation interactions and transport phenomena; plasma turbulence; atomic physics in plasmas; plasma-material interactions; gas discharge physics; and plasma chemistry.

Professional Distinctions:

• Fellow of the American Physical Society

Juan C. Lasheras received his Ph.D. from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University in 1982. After spending two years as research scientist at the Koninklijke Shell Laboratorium-Amsterdam in The Netherlands, he joined the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In 1990 he was appointed as Professor of Aerospace Engineering at UCSD where he has served as Chairman since 1999. His research interests include turbulent flows, two-phase flows and bio-fluid mechanics. He conducts laboratory and mathematical modeling of flows relevant to a wide range of applications spanning from naval hydrodynamics to vascular hemodynamics.

Professional Distinctions:

• Guggenheim Fellowship. 1977-78, 1978-79.
• George Van Ness-Lothrop Fellowship. 1980-1981
• F.N. Frenkiel Award for Fluid Dynamics. American Physical Society. 1990.
• School of Engineering Annual Teaching Award. Engineering Honor Society. UCSD. 1994
• Best Teacher of the Year Award in MAE. 1994-95, 1996-97, 1997-98, 1999-2000.
• Profeseur Associe. Universite J. Fourier. Grenoble I. France. 1991-92, 1993-94.
• Elected member of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain. 1999.
• Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). 2000.

Eric Lauga received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2005 after studies at Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole des Mines de Paris and University of Paris, Pierre et Marie Curie, in France.  He then spent one year in the Mechanical Engineering department at MIT as the Hock Tan postdoctoral fellow and was assistant professor at MIT in the Mathematics department from 2006 to 2007.  He joined the MAE department in 2007. Using tools from applied mathematics and continuum mechanics, Professor Lauga's research focuses on physical hydrodynamics, microfluidics, biophysics and the biomechanics of locomotion. .

Professional Distinctions:

• NSF CAREER Award (2008-2013)
• Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Dynamics, American Physical Society (2006).
• Hock Tan Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT (2005-2006).
• Derek Bok Teaching Award, Harvard University (2004, 2005).
• Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences Teaching Award, Harvard University (2003).
• Corps des Mines Fellowship, Ecole des Mines de Paris, France (1998-2001).
• Prix d'Option in Mechanics, Ecole Polytechnique, France (1998).

Paul F. Linden is a fluid dynamicist who carries out laboratory and theoretical modeling of flows in the disciplines of geophysical, environmental and industrial fluid dynamics. The flows encountered in natural and industrial contexts are usually turbulent and have variations in density which produce strong buoyancy forces. At large scales the rotation of the Earth also influences the dynamics. My research focuses on the physical processes involved, with a view to gaining an understanding of the underlying principles governing these flows.

Stefan G. Llewellyn Smith received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1996. He was a research fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1996 to 1999, working in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. He spent a year from 1996 to 1997 on a Lindemann Trust Fellowship at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. He joined the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCSD in 1999 as Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering. His research interests include fluid dynamics, especially its application to environmental and engineering problem, acoustics and asymptotic methods.

Alison Marsden received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2005, after doing undergraduate work at Princeton University. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Pediatrics Department at Stanford University until 2007, when she came to UCSD to join the faculty in MAE. Her research applies fluid mechanics simulation and optimization tools to complex flow problems, with particular focus on cardiovascular biomechanics. She maintains close collaborations with cardiology and surgery faculty in the medical schools at both UCSD and Stanford. Areas of research include surgery design, derivative-free optimization methods, bio-fluid mechanics, geometry parameterization, patient-specific modeling, and design principles of the cardiovascular system.

Professional Distinctions:

• Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (2007)
• American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship (2006)
• Dean's Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford Medical School (2005)
• Zonta International Amelia Earhart Award (2003-2004)

David Miller received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1966. He joined the faculty at UC San Diego in 1966 as a member of the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Sciences Department (AMES), the genesis of the current MAE Department. He is also affiliated with the chemical engineering program. His research interests are centered in engineering physics, especially related to experimental molecular beam experiments. Recent areas include gas dynamics of free-jet expansions, gas-surface interactions, and chemistry in supercritical fluids.

Keiko K. Nomura received her Ph.D. from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University of California, Irvine in 1994 and immediately joined the faculty at UCSD. Her present research interests are in the areas of computational fluid dynamics, turbulence, and combustion. Other areas include multiphase flows, heat and mass transfer. She held a development engineer position with Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories from 1983-1987.

Constantine Pozrikidis received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1985. From 1985 to 1987 he held the position of research scientist at the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories in Rochester, New York. He has been on the faculty of UCSD since 1987. His research interests are in the areas of theoretical and computational fluid dynamics, applied mathematics, and transport phenomena. He is author of three books: Boundary - Integral and Simularity Methods for Linearized Viscous Flow; Introduction to Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics; Numerical Computation in Science and Engineering.

James W. Rottman received his Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the Department of Applied Mechanics and Engineering Sciences at the University of California, San Diego in 1978. Since then he has held research positions at the University of Cambridge, North Carolina State University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. He currently is a senior scientist in the Naval Hydrodynamics Division of Science Applications International Corporation. He joined the MAE adjunct faculty in March 2000. His research interests focus on meteorology and oceanography and include theoretical, numerical and experimental studies of internal waves, gravity currents, wake flows, turbulence, and mixing in stratified fluids.

Sutanu Sarkar received his Ph.D. from the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Cornell University in 1988.  He spent the following years until 1992 as a staff scientist in the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) at NASA Langley Research Center.  He has been with the MAE faculty since 1993. His primary research interests are in the areas of computational fluid mechanics and turbulence.  Applications include transport and mixing in the natural environment, in reacting flows and in high-speed flows.

Professional Distinctions:

• Elected Fellow, American Physical Society, 2006
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award, 2001.
• NASA Group Achievement Award, 1994.
• John McMullen Fellowship, 1984.

Kalyanasundaram Seshadri received his Ph.D. degree in engineering science from UCSD in 1977. He was a member of the technical staff at TRW until 1980 and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Southern California until 1982, when he joined the faculty at UCSD. His research interests focus on the field of combustion.

 

F. E. Talke received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1968, and worked at the IBM Research and Development Laboratories in San Jose from 1969-1986. He was a visiting professor at UC Berkeley in 1984, and joined the Department of MAE at UCSD in 1986. He is currently with the Center for Magnetic Recording Research, where he holds an endowed chair in the area of mechanics and tribology of magnetic recording systems. His current research interests are in the areas of mechanics and tribology of magnetic recording technology, precision engineering, and optimization of mechanical design.

Professional Distinctions:

• Elected Member of the National Academy of Engineering, 1999
• Scholarship of the Deutsche Studienstiftung, 1963-66
• Outstanding Contribution Award, Technology Research, IBM 1971, 1979, 1984
• Best Paper Award, SPIE, 1982

Daniel M. Tartakovsky received his M.S. degree in applied mathematics and fluid mechanics from Kazan State University, Russia in 1991, and Ph.D. in hydrology from the University of Arizona, Tucson in 1996. Since 1996, he was a postdoctoral research fellow, a technical staff member, and a team leader in the Mathematical Modeling and Analysis Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM. He joined the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego in 2005. Professor Tartakovsky's research interests include modeling of subsurface flow and transport, uncertainty quantification, stochastic partial differential equations, reactive transport, and inverse modeling.

George R. Tynan received his Ph.D. in 1991 from the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. He then spend several years studying the effect of sheared flows on plasma turbulence on experiments located in the Federal Republic of Germany and at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He then returned to UCLA where he helped develop a concept for a new fusion experiment currently under construction. He joined the MAE faculty in July 1999 after spending several years investigating the application of low-temperature plasmas to the creation of nano-meter scale semiconductor circuits. His current research interests include basic studies of plasma turbulence and transport, low-temperature plasma physics with applications to materials processing, and plasma-nanocluster interactions.

Forman A. Williams received his Ph.D in engineering science from the California Institute of Technology in 1958. He was an assistant professor at Harvard until 1964, at which time he came to UCSD as professor when the Department of MAE was established. In 1981, he accepted the Robert H. Goddard Chair at Princeton but returned to UCSD in 1988. He assumed the directorship of the Center for Energy and Combustion Research in 1991. His research interests center in the field of combustion.

Professional Distinctions:

• Alexander von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Award, 1982
• Member, National Academy of Engineering, 1987
• Bernard Lewis Gold Medal of the Combustion Institute, 1990
• AIAA Pendray Aerospace Literature Award, 1993
• University of California Presidential Chair in Energy and Combustion Research, 1993

Kraig is a Principal Investigator in the Integrative Oceanography Division and a member of the Center for Observations Modeling and Prediction at Scripps. He is the leader of the Computational Fluid Dynamics and Ocean Process Modeling Group and is an Adjunct Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.