Alumni

Donald B. Bliss

PhD Students

Krista Michalis

Naval Surface Warfare Center

David Raudales

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Physical Acoustics Branch; Mechanical Engineer

Keye Su

Envision Energy, Research Engineer

Mauricio Villa

US Naval Research lab

Masters Students

Max Gardner

Research Interests: Max is currently assisting Dr. Donald Bliss in developing an improved analysis of 2-D unsteady supersonic flow. Linearized unsteady supersonic flow is analyzed with the intention of improving on the “piston theory” model while retaining functional simplicity and accuracy [...]

Earl H. Dowell

PhD Students

Peter Attar

Associate Professor, University of Oklahoma

Kai Kruger Bastos

Consulting CFD Engineer at ICON Technology & Process Consulting

Research Interests: Kai Kruger Bastos focused on the theoretical and computational studies of fluid dynamics phenomena including buffet, flutter and limit cycle oscillations under the advisement of Dr. Earl Dowell. Before arriving at Duke Kai graduated from Lafayette College with a BS (honors) in [...]

Howard Conyers

NASA Stennis Space Center

Dean Culver

Army Research Laboratory; Postdoctoral Fellow

Chad Custer

CD Adapco

Ian K Eldridge-Allegra

CFD Engineer, Corvid Technologies

Research Interests: Ian is particularly interested in the study of aeroelastic instabilities and the application of computational fluid dynamics.

Bogdan Epureanu

Professor, University of Michigan

Aldo Ferri

Professor, Georgia Tech

Linda Franzoni

Professor, Duke University

Maxim Freydin

Research Interests: Maxim is currently taking part in designing a hypersonic flutter experiment of a plate that is affected by static pressure and temperature differentials under the advisement of Dr Earl Dowell. Using linear and nonlinear theoretical models, the plate dimensions are designed to [...]

S. Chad Gibbs

Space X

Ben Goldman

Global Aerospace Corporation

Jennifer Heeg

NASA Langley Research Center

Justin Jaworski

Associate Professor, Lehigh University

Andy Katz

Physician

Denis Kholodar

Transport Canada Civil Aviation

Michael Lee

NASA Langley

Research Interests: Michael was a Ph.D. student in the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science department at Duke University. Under the advisement of Dr. Earl Dowell, Michael worked on researching the nonlinear dynamics of turbulent fluid flows. Since beginning his study at Duke in 2016, his [...]

Dani Levin

Research Interests: Dani is researching the application of Volterra Series theory to real-world engineering problems. Specifically, as a practical tool for creating unsteady aerodynamic ROM (Reduced Order  Models) from CFD results for the aeroelastic analysis under the advisement of Dr [...]

Aiqin Li

Proctor and Gamble

Karen Lyle

NASA Langley Research Center

Aparajit Mahajan

Net App

Kevin McHugh

Research Aerospace Engineer,Air Force Research Lab

Research Interests: Kevin was a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering and Material Science at Duke University. He studied aeroelasticity under the advisement of Dr. Earl Dowell, and his current research explores large, nonlinear deflections of beams and plates. Kevin was supported by the SMART [...]

Madhu Padmanabhan

Aeronautical Development Agency

Chuck Pezeshki

Professor, Washington State University

Christopher Pierre

Professor and Provost, Stevens Institute of Technology

Robert Reynolds

CD Adapco

Tanya Reynolds

Oakland University

Benson Tongue

Professor, University of California at Berkeley

Ivan Wang

Capire Micropower

Masters Students

Yifan Guo

PhD student,Purdue University

Research Interests: Yifan Guo worked on modal analysis of plates and shells with different combinations of boundary conditions and geometry shapes through finite element method. Computational Dynamics of plates Modal Analysis of Rectangular, Triangular and Circular Plates In this part, [...]

Matthew Hawkins

Engineer,Lockheed Martin

Research Interests: Experimental Study of Non-Linear Flutter Dynamics for Gust Excitation on Finite Wing In his first role within the Aeroelasticty group , Matt supported wind tunnel testing of thin-plate aeroelastic properties by modification of an existing 50 m/s wind-tunnel apparatus. The goal [...]

Siddhant Sandeep Bapat

PhD student, Penn State University

Research Interests: Sid is a Master's Student in Dr. Earl Dowell's lab and is currently investigating the effects of random vibrations on a wing or fuselage using a Nonlinear Reduced Order Aeroelastic Model. 

John Smalley

Manufacturing Engineer, SpaceX

Research Interests: John is part of Dr. Dowell's research group studying the unsteady behavior of pressure distribution of an airfoil and other geometries given an arbitrary motion, operating the Duke Wind Tunnel and comparing results with computational models. 

THRUST Masters Students

Longzhao Luo

Research Interests: Longzhao (Long) was a Master of Engineering candidate for Duke-KTH THRUST program. Long worked on the Wing Flutter/LCO and Forced Response Interaction project.  His work included setting up the experiment environment and quantifying the structual / fluid coupling [...]

Undergraduate Students

Santiago Brito

Research Interests: Santiago is conducting research focused on learning the behavior of cantilever plates as prototypes of a wing undergoing buckling. He started doing research in the Fall of 2021 and continues to collect and analyze data of the linear and nonlinear behavior of the plate under a [...]

Oliver Gibson

PhD student, University of Michigan

Research Interests: Oliver is researching the effects of torsional loads on the bending, buckling, and dynamic behavior of a cantilevered plate. In spring 2021, he designed and constructed a testing rig to experimentally collect plate displacement data. He is continuing this work into the summer of [...]

Chris Knotek

Research Interests: Chris is researching the effects of torsional loads on the bending and buckling modes of a vertical cantilever plate. In Summer 2021, he joined the lab and helped redesign and build a test setup to measure the displacement and buckling of cantilever plates. He is continuing the [...]

Diego Salgado

Ph.D. Student at MIT

Research Interests: Diego Salgado majored in Mechanical Engineering with a certificate in Aerospace Engineering. Under the supervision of Prof Earl Dowell, Diego focused on the interaction between the flutter induced limit cycle oscillation and the forced excitation created by a gust generator on [...]

Kenneth C. Hall

PhD Students

Eli Giovanetti

McKinsey & Company

Natalia Smelova

Research Engineer, GE Global Research

Research Interests: Natalie was a PhD student who worked on turbomachinery unsteady Aerodyanmics method development. She currently works as a research engineer at GE Global Research 

Matthew Tedesco

Future Technical Leaders Program, Northrop Grumman

Research Interests: Matthew was an NDSEG fellowship recipient and Dr. Kenneth Hall's Ph.D. student. Being interested in helicopter aerodynamics, Matthew pursued new techniques in computing optimal rotor configurations with the end goal of minimizing power consumption. Before coming to Duke, [...]

Dymtro Voytoych

Principal Engineer, RTRC

Research Interests: Dmytro was a PhD student working under Ken Hall. He graduated in 2004 and currently works at Raytheon Technologies Research Centre(RTRC)

Masters Students

Dominick Scialabba

Research Interests: Under the guidance of Dr. Kenneth C. Hall, Dom is performing research on optimal propellers with specific focus on increasing propulsive efficiency by altering tip geometries. With the intent to change the way we think about propeller design, Dom uses computational models and [...]

THRUST Masters Students

Yann Dreze

Research Interests: Yann was a graduate student currently working on experimental Non-Synchronous Vibrations. His focus was to determine the unsteady forces in the lock in region of a NACA0012 blade at high angles of attack. 

Bas Grootnibbelink

Research Interests: Bas was a graduate student working towards his M.Eng. in mechanical engineering. In collaboration with the Leibniz University Hannover he worked on computational modeling of non-synchronous vibrations for turbomachinery applications. This was being done to build and validate a [...]

Robert Kielb

PhD Students

Fanny Besem

Application and Consultant Engineer, Numeca International, San Francisco, California

Stephen Clark

McKinsey & Company

Richard Hollenbach

Thermal Sciences Associate, Exponent Scientific and Engineering Consulting

Research Interests: Richard is studying Nonsynchronous Vibrations in turbomachinery using a single airfoil in Duke's Low Speed Wind Tunnel.

Jing Li

GE Global Research Center, Niskayuna, NY

Zhiping Mao

Investment Manger, Summitview Capital, China

Tommy Miyakozawa

Aeromechanics Specialist, Rolls-Royce, Indianapolis, Indiana

Meredith Spiker

Aeromechanics Specialist, General Electric Aviation, Boston, Mass

Joshua Waite

McKinsey & Company

Masters Students

Jalen Doherty

Simulation engineer, Joby Aviation

Research Interests: Jalen was a Master of science(MS) student in the MEMS department.His work under Dr Kielb and Dr Dowell involved investigating the interaction between flutter and forced response both experimentally and computationally

Victoria Jiang

Research Interests: She is focusing on Aerodynamics and participating in this research group contributing to the computing cylinders tasks recently. She is interested in airfoil structure design and simulation, including calculation and simulation in fluid mechanics. As well as the application [...]

Wentao Ma

PhD Student,Virginia Tech

Research Interests: Wentao worked on evaluating the multi-row effects on the aerodynamic damping of rotor blades in a multi-stage compressor. This involved understanding the physics using a frequency-domain Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method with an end goal of being able to design safer jet [...]

Aaron Quan

Mechanical Design engineer at Cesium Astro

Research Interests: During his time as a Masters stuent Aaron worked on an in-house mistuning code MISER.His work involved implemtning new algorithms for faster and more accurate predictions

Ryne Wang

PhD student, University of Notre Dame

Research Interests: Ryne’s current role in Aeroelasticity group is to study unsteady pressure induced by both enforced and shedding motion measured from the upper and the lower surface of the NACA0012 airfoil, in both computational method and experiments. Therefore, to determine the relationship [...]

THRUST Masters Students

Nicolas de Porras-Isla

Scania AB

Research Interests: Nicolas was a Masters of Engineering candidate of the THRUST program. Interested in Aerospace Propulsion, Nicolas was part of the LASCADE project to investigate flutter in turbomachinery. He's currently working in Scania as an aero engineer

Tim Georgsson

Aeromechanics Engineer,MTU Aero Engines

Research Interests: Tim was a Masters of Engineering candidate of the THRUST program and was part of the LASCADE project to investigate flutter in turbomachinery. He is currently working at MTU Aero engines as an aeromechanics engineer

Manuel Gonzalez Garcia

Research Interests: Regarding his research interests he is now focusing on the LASCADE project. This project concerns developing a linear compressor cascade test rig for the wind tunnel available at Duke University.

James Matthew Hardy

PhD student, University of Colorado Boulder

Research Interests: Matt worked in collaboration with rocket engine startup Ursa Major Technologies to develop a water-flow test rig to rapidly iterate novel inducer designs

Anil Mohan

Research Interests: Anil worked on the Calibration of pressure transducers to be used in the LASCADE project in collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden to study the unsteady phenomena of flow.

Yash Nigam

Research Interests: His research interest lies in Micro Gas Turbines and Hybrid Propulsion System for UAVs. During his time at Duke, He will be working on developing a Micro Gas Turbine system for aerospace propulsion under the supervision of Dr. Robert Kielb. 

Davide Di Nubila

Isar Aerospace

Research Interests: Davide worked on supporting the Duke electric vehicles team. His worked involved validating present and future CFD results and also developing a cooling system for the cockpit. Duke Electric Vehicle is one of the most outstanding automotive application in the university world. [...]

Daniele Vasselli

Research Interests: Daniele worked on the development of a numerical model for Wind Turbines drive trains. The goal was to embed the developed tool into a simulation software

Yuhan Wang

Research Interests: Yuhan worked on the relationship between the shock wave position and compressor blade flutter in the transonic flow field,  under the advisement of Dr. Kielb.  

Visiting Scholars

Pascal Franke

Research Interests: Pascal was a visiting scholar in 2019.He worked on investigating NSV in low-load turbines computationally as a part of his master's thesis  at Leibniz University Hanover (Germany).The project is funded by the GUIde 6 consortium

Katharina Meinecke

Research Interests: Katharina worked on experimental Non-Synchronous Vibrations. Her focus was to determine the unsteady forces in the lock in region of a NACA0012 blade at high angles of attack. The analysis was done the Fourier domain in an attempt to separate the contributions in the unsteady [...]

Tianyu Pan

Associate Professor,Beihang University

Research Interests: Tianyu was a visiting scholar from Beihang university.During his time at Duke Tianyu worked on investigating the multi-row forced response behaviour of embedded compressor rotors

Undergraduate Students

Sydney Beckett

Engineer at Boeing

Research Interests: As a new member of the non-synchronous vibrations team, Sydney is assisting in testing and analysis of the NACA 0012 airfoil and linear cascade, ultimately understanding the lock-in phenomenon. More specifically, she is improving the experimental set up of the motor which [...]

Atanaz Bohlooli

Cost Engineer-ExxonMobil

Research Interests: As a member of the NSV (Non-Synchronous Vibrations) Research team, Atanaz conducted experiments on an oscillating airfoil in the wind tunnel. She focusses on better understand the 'lock-in' region

Mihai Cimpuieru

Research Interests: Mihai Cimpuieru was an undergradute student at Duke studying Mechanical Engineering with an Aerospace certificate. During the summer after his freshman year, Mihai worked as an undergraduate research assistant on a study about the interaction of flutter and force response on [...]

Jared Gudino

Research Interests: As a new member of the Linear Cascade team, Jared is working on the design and manufacturing of motion system components for compressor blade oscillation during wind tunnel testing.

JD Inge

Research Interests: As a member of the aeromechanics and CFD team, he is working to improve mistuning studies. Utilizing an in-house code to perform mistuing studies and data from computational fluid dynamics simulations, JD is working on predicting the behavior of rotor blades due to slight [...]

Matt Jaynes

Research Interests: A new addition to the non-synchronous vibrations team, Matthew is working on wind tunnel testing and analysis for the NACA 0012 airfoil experiencing the lock-in phenomenon. He is updating the pressure systems, incorporating the new DAQ system, and measuring unsteady pressures.

Michael Kang

Quality Engineer,Lockheed Martin

Research Interests: Michael was a senior majoring in Mechanical Engineering and minoring in Finance. He worked on an independent study proejct under the guidance of Prof. Robert Kielb on the effects of mistuning in compressors , evaluating the accuracy of the MISER software in predicting the [...]

Ryan Kwon

Systems Engineer,Ultra electronics Ocean systems

Research Interests: Ryan Kwon majored in Mechanical Engineering and Material Science with an Aerospace Certificate. He began working under the guidance of Prof Robert Kielb in Spring 2018. His research focused on using computational methods to examine the chaotic region when comparing the amplitude [...]

Jacob Manders

Research Interests: Jacob is researching experimental rig design and testing. He designed and built a pinning system to ensure a proper pinned boundary condition for a NACA 0012 experiment. Now he will be testing a motor system to be used in the Linear Cascade Project.

Justin Nickelsberg

Research Interests: As a new member of the LASCADE team, Justin will be involved in the development of a linear cascade test system. He will be focusing on the creation and calibration of the test rig's pressure and data acquisition systems.

Anthony Paul

Mechanical Engineer,Berkshire Grey

Research Interests: Anthony Paul majored in  Mechanical Engineering. He was a member of the AeroElasticity group since his junior year. His contributions include the following: • Utilized a Fortran program to investigate the effects of reduced freq, mach number, stagger angle, pitching axis [...]

Jonathan Riley

Research Interests: Jonathan Riley was an undergraduate student at Duke University studying Mechanical Engineering. As a member of the LASCADE (Linear Cascade) Research team, Jonathan worked on the investigation of flutter occurence inside a compressor linear cascade. He focussed on designing the [...]

Matthew Urke

SpaceX

Ignacio Valdez Bicard

Research Interests: Ignacio is a new member of the non-synchronous vibrations team. He is assisting with experimentation in the wind tunnel and computational analysis, including a new DAQ system.

Vincent Wang

Research Interests: Having joined the LASCADE team in fall of 2021, Vincent will be working on developing the unsteady pressure measurement system for the LASCADE test wing by calibrating pressure transducers and investigating their interaction with the data acquisition setup used by the team.