Mechanical Engineering

Research activities in our group focus on the computational modeling and experimental analysis of turbulent and chemically reacting flows. Applications include propulsion systems, renewable energy, carbon sequestration, and high-speed and multiphase flows. Particular emphasis is directed towards improving the fundamental understanding of underlying physical processes involving the coupling between turbulence, reaction chemistry, pollutant formation and noise emission.

We invent and develop systems which couple fluid flow, chemical reactions, mass transport, heat transfer, and/or electric fields and apply these to chemical and biological assays.  We design, build, and test microfluidic devices that couple electrokinetics with chemical reactions for on-chip analyses of DNA and high-throughput flow systems for cell assays.  We have two funded projects for which we seek a motivated postdoctoral researcher:

Our research is concerned with the computational modeling and the experimental investigation of fluids in complex environments, including chemical reactions, phase transition, and heterogeneous flow environment. We addressing fundamental scientific questions, problems pertaining to energy-conversion and propulsion, as well as environmental issues related to wildfire predictions, carbon-capture and sequestration, and water desalination. We are developing advanced numerical algorithms, detailed physical models, and physics-informed and data-driven methods.

The Cardiovascular Biomechanics Computation Lab  develops fundamental computational methods for the study of cardiovascular disease progression, surgical methods, treatment planning and medical devices.  We focus on patient-specific modeling in pediatric and congenital heart disease, as well as adult cardiovascular disease.  Our lab bridges engineering and medicine through the departments of Pediatrics, Bioengineering, and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. We develop the SimVascular open source project.

Two postdoc positions in the lab of Prof. Sindy Tang are immediately available in the areas of microfluidics, nanofabrication, and spatial proteomics.

My group is interested in elucidating the mechanics of cell-matrix interactions in soft tissues. We seek to understand how the mechanical properties of the extracellular matrix regulate processes such as breast cancer progression, stem cell differentiation, and cell division. Further, we aim to determine the biophysics of cell migration and division in confining 3D microenvironments. Our approach involves the use of engineered biomaterials for 3D cell culture and instrumentation to measure forces at the microscale relevant to cells.