Director
Dr. Bladimir Ramos-Alvarado is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the principal investigator of the Interfacial Phenomena Lab (IPHEL) at Penn State University, he is a member of the Materials Computation Center at Penn State, and an Associate of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State. He also serves as a Subject Matter Editor for Applied Thermal Engineering (Elsevier). Dr. Ramos obtained a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree, both in Mechanical Engineering, from the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Later on, he continued his education at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) where he obtained a PhD and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2016. After brief Postdoctoral and Instructor appointments at Georgia Tech, Dr. Ramos joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University as an Assistant Professor in May of 2017. Dr. Ramos research interests are strongly focused on the modeling of transport processes at different length scales and multiphysics modeling. Dr. Ramos primary research focuses on atomistic scale modeling of thermal and momentum transport across solid-liquid interfaces and how these phenomena relate to surface chemistry and interfacial liquid properties; additionally, he has conducted research on molecular dynamics modeling of friction in solid-solid interfaces, mechanical properties of 2-D materials, and dielectric polymer nanocomposites. He also has vast experience designing, optimizing, and testing liquid-cooling devices for electronics. In the past, he conducted research on the experimental characterization of PEM fuel cells operation, water transport/management in PEM fuel cells, and numerical modeling of PEM fuel cells.. The wide span of Dr. Ramos’ research interests is contained in the archival records of journals such as the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Applied Thermal Engineering, Applied Physics Letters, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Physical Review E, among others. Dr. Ramos’ research has been published in 43 archival Journal papers, 17 papers in Conference Proceedings, and has been cited over 1000 times.
Applied Thermal Engineering – Editorial Board
Graduate Students
Abdul Aziz Shuvo (Graduate Research Assistant) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University. He received his BS (2019) and MS (2022) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka. He conducted research on thermal cooling of high-power electronic devices. He has also experience in Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM), Focused Ion Beam (FIB). His research interests are focused on thermal management of high-power electronic devices, and atomistic interactions at solid-liquid interfaces. | |
Marcus Perovich (Graduate Research Assistant) is an MS student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University. He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Penn State. His research interests include thermal and fluid properties that are present throughout high heat applications such as automotive engines and turbine mechanisms. He also has experience with modeling in SolidWorks for various manufacturing technicalities. | |
Emdadul Haque Chowdhury (Graduate Research Assistant) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University. He completed his B.Sc. (2021) in Mechanical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka. He has experience in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of 2D materials and fluids. In addition, he worked on the ReaxFF reactive MD force-field development and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. His research interests include but are not limited to MD simulations, DFT calculations, nanoscale heat transport, mechanical and thermal properties of materials. |
World Campus MS Students
Maria Loreto an online Masters student in the department of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University. She received her BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Florida International University. She has worked for over 3 years as a mechanical engineer at L3Harris Technologies focusing on GPS satellite development. Her research interests include thermal management of circuit card assemblies and electronic packaging. | |
Andrew Snyder is an online MSME student at Penn State University. He received his BSME from the University of Southern Maine in 2016. He has helped design and procure equipment for consumer electronics manufacturing and supercritical CO2 power generation. Most recently, he has been learning to apply commercial finite element modeling software for thermal analysis. His research interests include cooling management of electronics and thermal properties of electronic packages. |
Undergraduate Students
Alumni
PhD Students
4. Luis E. Paniagua-Guerra, December 2023, “Molecular dynamics investigation of heat transfer in solvated plasmonic nanoparticles”.
Currently: Postdoctoral scholar at Penn State.
3. Devon Eichfeld, August 2023, “Development of a new sub-micron metrology technique and optimization of thermal rectifier design using novel materials”.
Currently: Postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
2. Carlos Perez, August 2023, “Thermal transport in materials and structures pertinent to quantum cascade lasers”.
Currently: Postdoc at The Pennsylvania State University.
1. Ulises Gonzalez-Valle, August 2021, “Implications of the interface modelling approach on the heat transfer across solid-liquid interfaces and thin-film”.
Currently: Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
MS Students
9. Joshua Aviles, August 2022, “Liquid-cooled heat sink for multilevel inverters with considerations for heat spreading and manufacturability”.
Currently: Northrop Grumman Space Systems.
8. Joshua Morse, August 2021, “Tradeoffs of electronics liquid-cooling design features”.
Currently: Keysight Technologies.
7. Timothy Deley, December 2020, “Effect of building material on the cooling performance of additively manufactured liquid-cooled heat sinks”.
Currently: Raytheon.
6. Carlos Ulises Gonzalez-Valle (August 2020), “Experimental investigation of the cooling performance of 3-D printed hybrid water-cooled heat sinks”.
Currently: see PhD Alumni.
5. Luis E. Paniagua-Guerra (August 2020). “Efficient hybrid microjet liquid cooled heat sinks made of photopolymer resin: thermo-fluid characteristics and entropy generation analysis”.
Currently: See PhD alumni.
4. Daniela Rocca-Bejar, August 2020, “Heating response study of aluminum nanoparticles with molecular dynamics simulations”.
Currently:
3. Michael Faucett Jr, August 2019, “Optimization of microjet liquid-cooling systems for CPUs”.
Currently: General Motors, Detroit, Michigan.
2. Renrui Lin, August 2018, “Thermal optimization of liquid-cooled heat sinks for power converters using micro channels”.
Currently: IT specialist in China.
1. Shitiz Sehgal, August 2018, “Numerical insights of fluid-thermal characteristics in a hybrid microjet liquid cooled heat sink”.
Currently: PhD Student in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University.
Undergrads
Juan Pablo Murrieta-Cortes (Visiting Student), July – December, 2023 – “Liquid-cooled Heat Sink Design Methodology with Technical and Commercial Viability Considerations: Case Study of a Partially 3-D Printed Prototype”
Currently: Upcoming PhD student at Penn State.
Yu-Han Wu, January – April, 2023 – “Experimental testing of liquid-cooled heat sinks”
Currently: Graduate student at UC Berkeley.
Aidan Robinson, August – December, 2022 – “Design of a control and heating system for a tribometer”
Currently: All4-Philadelphia
Harin Chhadva, August – December, 2021 – “Design of a test bench for liquid-cooled heat sinks”
Currently: Mechanical Strategic Engineer at Constellation Energy
Cheng Li, January – May, 2020 – “Hydraulic optimization of 3-D fractal manifolds”
Currently: Amazon
Saurabh Samir (Visiting Student), May – July, 2019 – “Experimental investigation of the performance of resin-made liquid-cooled heat sinks”.
Currently: Indian Institute of Technology.
Jean Carlos Cortés Rivera (Visiting Student), June – August, 2019 – NSF REU: Scalable Nanomanufacturing of Complex Materials.
Currently: University of Puerto Rico at Cayey (UPR Cayey)
Hunter C. Maholic, January – May, 2019.
Jonathan Veli, August – December, 2018 – “Design and fabrication of liquid-cooled heat sinks using additive manufacturing”
Currently: Intern at Timken
Matthew Shultz, May – August, 2018 – “Analysis and optimization of liquid-cooled cold plates using pin fins”
Currently: Product development engineer, Advanced Cooling Technologies.