Principal Investigator
Jessica K. Shang
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering; Scientist, Laboratory for Laser Energetics (CV)
Jessica Shang is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Rochester. She did a postdoc with the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford, advised by Alison Marsden. She received a PhD in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Princeton in 2015, co-advised by Lex Smits and Howard Stone, an MPhil in Engineering at Cambridge advised by Holger Babinsky, and a BA in Engineering Sciences from Harvard. She enjoys interesting fundamental fluids problems and is always in awe of the role fluid dynamics in the natural world. When not at research, Jessica is spending time with her kids, cooking, reading, and occasionally crafting.
Graduate Students
Nitish Acharya
Nitish is pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Rochester. His research interests are in high-energy density hydrodynamics, and is co-advised by Hussein Aluie. He is working on experiments and simulations on shock-particle interactions and perturbed shocks, using the FLASH and LILAC codes. He is also a Frank J. Horton Graduate Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. He previously earned a BE in Mechanical Engineering from Tribhuvan University in Nepal.
Brennen Carr
Brennen is pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Rochester, and recently also completed his MBA with the Simon Business School. His research is in computational biomechanics of the glymphatic system of the brain. Brennen comes from Union College in Schenectady, NY, in Mechanical Engineering.
Afreen Syeda
Afreen is a PhD student, co-advised by Hussein Aluie. Her expertise is in particle tracking with x-ray radiography in shock-driven flows, and viscometry using shocked particles. Afreen completed a BTech in Aeronautical Engineering at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H), and followed by an MTech at IIT-Kampur in Aerospace Engineering.
Kelin Kurzer-Ogul
Kelin began as a MS student in our department, and then matriculated into the PhD program, co-advised by Hussein Aluie. He majored in Physics at UC Santa Cruz. Kelin’s research is currently on shock-particle interactions and void collapse simulations using xRAGE, working closely with scientists at SLAC and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Hao Yin
Hao was one of our own undergrads here at U of R, and is now in our PhD program. He is co-advised with Hussein Aluie. His research interests are in high-energy-density hydrodynamics, instabilities, and turbulence.
Undergraduates
Anjeli Estrada
Anjeli is a rising junior in Mechanical Engineering, minoring in Computer Science. She is from Ecuador, and went to high school in Malaysia. She is working on particle tracking in radiography images. She is also involved in Baja SAE as the frame lead, and Engineers Without Borders.
Alejandro Porras Díaz
Alejandro is a rising junior majoring in Mechanical Engineering and minoring in Computer Science. He was born in El Salvador and attended the French school there. Alejandro is currently working on shock wave simulations and tracking using the FLASH code and python respectively. He is also the current Chief Engineer for Solar Splash and plays varsity squash for UR.
Alumni
Umar Mutwafy ’22 (MechE) — Applied Materials
Yixin (Charles) Pan ’22 (MechE) — ASML
Savannah Schisler ’22 (MechE) — Boston University PhD program in Mechanical Engineering
Caroline Cardinale ’21 (MechE) — Caltech PhD program in Mechanical Engineering
Delin (Stevie) Zeng ’21 (MechE) — Columbia MS program in Mechanical Engineering — Columbia PhD program in Biomedical Engineering
Kai Kindred ’20 (MechE) — Danbury Mission Technologies, Saltire Scholar (University of Glasgow)
Leo Liu ’19 (MechE) — Univ of Virginia PhD program, Mech & Aerospace Engineering (Link Ocean Fellowship)
John (Jack) Billings ’19 (MechE) — L3 Harris Technologies — now at Ball Aerospace (Denver)
Deok-Hoon Jeong ’19 (MechE) — UC-Santa Barbara PhD program
Amro Bayoumy ’20 (MechE, Xerox Fellow) — EIT Masters in Autonomous Systems (Aalto Univ, Finland; TU Berlin, Germany)
Will Gorman *18 (Physics & Astro) — FAAC Inc.
Dr. Jeong-Hyun Kim — Hibbitt Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University >> Assistant Professor at Seoultech
Diwas Gautam ’20 (MechE)
Khusbu Modi ’19 (MechE)
Hunter Dell ’18 (MechE)
Chris Koo ’19 (Mechanical Engineering)