About Me

I am fascinated by high-speed and high-enthalpy flows, propulsion technology, plasma flows, space exploration, and the connection between technological, social and political change.

My PhD work has been mostly experimental and dealt with turbulent and reacting flows. More specifically, I performed research on spherically expanding flames as well as entrainment, mixing, and combustion in compressible supersonic flows. This involved a wide variety of diagnostics (e.g. hot-wires, Schlieren, Particle Image Velocimetry, Laser Induced Fluorescence) and analytical techniques for data series and images (ill-posed inverse problems). The applications of the research range from astrophysical phenomena (such as compressible stellar jets), to industrial mixing, supersonic retro-propulsion and scramjets. To help make my own and my fellow student’s life easier, I got involved in starting our lab’s on-boarding and knowledge transfer efforts.

Currently, I work at UT Austin at the Center for Aeromechanics. As a Postdoc and Research Associate, I am investigating an inductively coupled plasma torch, a capacitively coupled glow discharge, and a cold flow analogue for the plasma torch. The work on the cold flow analogue and the glow discharge is supported by two graduate students. The torch produces an atmospheric plasma that has been used in studies related to atmospheric re-entry and provides rich and interesting physics. The experiomental efforts are part of a larger project to realize exa-scale simulations of complex non-equilibrium plasmas.

My research profile has a focus on reacting, high-enthalpy and high-speed flows, together with expertise in several optical and laser measurement techniques. I am also experienced with statistical methods and have been working on tomographic reconstruction and inverse problems, to leverage the amount of information that can be extracted from experimental diagnostics.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had the privilege to work in a team of Georgia Tech students and faculty designing a fully functional emergency ventilator system. Which was an interesting experience in product development, while contributing something that can help people directly.

When I am not busy with experiments and research, I spend my time hiking, camping and rock climbing. Restore the sanity before becoming a mad scientist again.