Alex Rattner (email) – is the principal investigator of the Multiscale Thermal Fluids and Energy Lab. He is the Dorothy Quiggle Career Development assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Penn State. He received his Ph.D. in Summer 2015 from the Georgia Institute of Technology as a US Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellow. His research expertise includes waste heat recovery, absorption refrigeration, high-heat-flux thermal management, power systems for planetary landers, membrane distillation, air-cooled condensers for power plants, and experimental and computational multiphase flow heat and mass transfer. His full CV is available here.
Mahdi Nabil (Ph.D. student, Fall 2015 – , email) – Mahdi received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) and Auburn University, respectively. His research interests include boiling heat transfer, PIV Measurements in turbulent flows, thermal conductivity enhancement of phase change materials, CFD studies on hyperthermia (cancer thermal therapy), and supercritical fluid heat transfer. His PhD dissertation topic is: Computational investigation of high-flux heating of supercritical fluids in microscale geometries, with applications to thermal management of high power electronics.
Sanjay Adhikari (Ph.D. student, Fall 2015 – , email) – Sanjay received his in B.S. degree in Mechanical engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, India and his M.S. degree from Carnegie Mellon University. He worked at an aerospace company for two years focusing on high speed flows. His research interests include fluid and particle dynamics, multiphase flow, simulation of deep drilling, oil jet breakup, and heat transfer in engine cooling galleries.His PhD dissertation research focuses on multiscale simulation of dropwise condensation and experimental measurement of transient heat transfer in dropwise condensation, with applications in energy systems and water desalination.
Christopher Greer (Ph.D. student, Spring 2018 – , email) – Chris received his in B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from Penn State in 2015. He completed an internship at SpaceX designing and building static thrust engine test stands. He completed his M.S. in 2017 at Penn State focusing on lithium combustion heat sources for planetary landers. His Ph.D. research focuses on designing high ambient temperature Rankine cycles to power planetary landers to extreme environments, such as Venus.
Shahzaib Abbasi (Ph.D. student, Spring 2017 – , email) – Shahzaib’s Ph.D. research focuses on cascaded waste heat recovery systems that can deliver both electrical power and refrigeration (through absorption cooling). Waste heat recovery applications include refrigerated transport trucks and metal heat treating in manufacturing processes.
Yue Cao (visiting Ph.D. student, Fall 2017 – Summer 2018, email) – Yue Cao is a visiting Ph.D. student from the Institute of Turbomachinery, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. His research interests include gas-turbine combined cycle design and transcritical/supercritical CO2 power cycles. At Penn State, he is investigating cascaded absorption waste heat recovery technologies and high efficiency cascaded power cycle configurations.
Colby Zarger (undergraduate research assistant, Fall 2017 – Spring 2018) – Colby is an undergraduate Schreyer Honors Scholar at Penn State. His research project focuses on the design and construction of an experimental facility to measure the effects of intermittent two-phase flow on boiling heat transfer to improve heat exchanger design.
Bryant Warmate (undergraduate research assistant, Fall 2017 – Spring 2018) – Bryant is an undergraduate Schreyer Honors Scholar at Penn State. His research project focuses on the design of an extreme temperature rotary vane motor for power generation on a Venus planetary lander.