Students and Staff

Current Students

Chuanxin Ni (Ph.D.)
I completed my Master’s Thesis research in FPCL and transferred to the Ph.D. program in the summer of 2019. My master’s research focuses on the thrombogenesis and hemodynamics in the patient-specific Left Atrial Appendages (LAA). Now, my Ph.D. project is about the ultrasonic acoustic wave generation in the larynx of bats. Specifically, I will investigate the relationship between the anatomical structures of bats’ larynx and the ultrasound generation by simulations.
Contact: [email protected]

Ji Zhou (Ph.D.)
I joined FPCL in 2020 Fall. I’ve been working on cutting-edge research projects, currently a flow-physics-informed model of fish collective behavior and high-fidelity simulations of fish mechanics in 3D. My previous research experience spans a range of biomedical/biological topics, from simulating blood flow in the left ventricle and cerebral aneurysms to designing in-vivo medical devices for abdominal aortic aneurysm treatment and investigating the flapping wings of mosquitoes.
Contact: LinkedIn

Sharun Kuhar (Ph.D.)
I am interested in biological and environmental applications of fluid mechanics. I joined FPCL in 2020, and I am currently working on gastro-intestinal biomechanics. In the past, I have studied thick slurry flow in mining industries, linear stability analysis of flow past a square cylinder at different blockage ratios, and mechanics of high-fiber-count optical fiber cables.

Sushrut Kumar (Ph.D.)
At Hopkins, my research integrates flow physics, computer science, and applied mathematics to reverse engineer biological multiphysics and provide engineering solutions. I achieved this by developing mathematical models and translating them into a new simulation software capable of running efficiently on O(1000) processors in HPC clusters using numerical methods to simulate multiphysics phenomena. The resulting high-dimensional datasets require statistical techniques and machine learning tools like PCA, FPM, ANN, and Gaussian process regression for analysis. Currently, I am focusing on using proximal policy optimization. An example simulation involves studying the fluid-structure interaction of a bat’s flexible wing to understand complex natural aerodynamics.
Contact: LinkedIn

Suryansh Prakhar (Ph.D.)
I joined FPCL in summer 2021. My PhD research will involve studying flow around rotors, specifically tracking vortices around the rotor and developing a computational model to find the contribution of different vortices and their interaction on aerodynamic forces and aeroacoustic noise. Before joining FPCL, I worked under Dr. Prosperetti on a project which focused on the effect of falling particles on the onset of instability in Rayleigh-Bénard convection.

Kwang Bem (KB) Ko (Master)
I am a master’s student from the biomedical engineering program, and I joined FPCL in August 2022. My main interests are in applying computational fluid dynamics to biological flows with a particular interest in hemodynamics. I am currently working on a thesis project where we are modelling flows of pulmonary arteries in patients (with congenital heart disease) who have undergone pulmonary valve replacement surgery. With this project, we hope to gain insights into relations between valve angulations and physiological flows, which will be useful for surgeons. I am incredibly excited to have the opportunity to work in this lab and I hope to broaden my knowledge in this exciting field!
Contact: [email protected]; LinkedIn

Zulfikar Alamlah (Master)
I joined FPCL in Fall 2022. My main interest is application of computational fluid dynamics in biomedicine, more specifically hemodynamics. Currently I am doing research in modeling and analysis of flow diverter stent for cerebral aneurysm, with hope to understand more about the effect of the flow diverter stent to the blood flow in cerebral aneurysm. Apart from that, I also have interest in automotives – with prior experience in automotive industry. Before joining FPCL, I received my B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia in 2020.
Contact: [email protected]; LinkedIn

Research Staff

Mostafa Aghaei Jouybari (Post-Doc)
I am a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University, co-advised by Professors Rajat Mittal and Charles Meneveau. I received my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University in Dec 2020 and B.Sc. Degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineerings from Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran) in Jul 2016. My scientific interests are numerical simulation of turbulent flows (DNS/LES/RANS) over rough walls and porous media, compressible flows, high performance computations and machine learning. My current research at the Johns Hopkins University deals with wall modeled LES of flow over roughness and porous media, and utilizing DNS to develop a better understanding of flow physics over these surfaces.

Umair Ismail (Post-Doc)
I joined the FPCL in late August 2021. My research work at JHU will rely on coupled FSI simulations – that leverage a sharp-interface IBM – to (1) model insect flight and (2) understand the spread of airborne infections like COVID-19 when wearing a face mask. Prior to this appointment, I briefly worked at NIST (Gaithersburg) in the Structures Group on LES of ABLs around urban structures. My primary research background is in using eddy-resolving simulations to understand & model turbulent flows of engineering & environmental relevance. These problems include elements of surface roughness, non-equilibrium effects in wall-bounded turbulence, laminar-to-turbulence transition and wind engineering. I have earned a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Iowa State University and a MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Delft University of Technology.

Jacob Turner (Post-Doc)
I joined FPCL as a post-doctoral researcher in October 2021. My main research interests are in compressible flows, aeroacoustics and unsteady aerodynamics. Currently, I am investigating the interaction between shock waves and vortex dynamics on pitching and heaving airfoils. The main objective is to determine the impact of compressibility on airfoil flutter and limit cycle oscillations. I attained my PhD from the University of Southampton in 2019, where I investigated various aeroacoustics problems, including airfoil-vortex interaction noise, leading-edge serrations, and acoustic sources in separated flows.

Harshal Raut (Post-Doc)
I joined the FPCL group in mid-December, 2022. My research interests include fluid-structure interaction, multiphase flows and AI in fluid mechanics. Currently I am working on using energy from waves for thrust generation for boats using heaving and pitching airfoils. It includes coupled fluid-structure interaction and multiphase flow simulations on supercomputers. I received my PhD from IIT Bombay in 2022, where I worked on heat transfer enhancement for nucleate boiling using externally actuated surfaces.
Contact: [email protected]

Athanasios Giannenas (Post-Doc)
The aim of my research is to obtain a mechanistic understanding of the physics of turbulent flows and how they can be leveraged to improve engineering applications. I received my PhD in aeronautical engineering from Imperial College London (2022). During my PhD, I developed new Immersed Boundary Methods (IBMs) which enabled the study of turbulent flows via large-scale simulations with complex and moving geometries on High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities. This allowed me to study various flow control strategies which can reduce the aerodynamic drag of bluff bodies.
I joined the Flow Physics and Computation Lab as a Post-doctoral Fellow in January 2023.
My current research is focused on the discovery of key physical mechanisms which underpin the efficient continuous and intermittent swimming of isolated and schooling fish. I hope that this effort will inform the design of future technologies that rely on aquatic locomotion.