People

Thermal signature of the group. (Majid, Terry, Ebonee, Mike, Nick, Greg)

Current Members

	D. Greg Walker, Associate Professor (Mechanical Engineering) Prof. Walker started at Vanderbilt in 2001 and has built a research group to study small-scale energy transport phenomena and novel heat flux measurement techniques. He is not nearly as smart as he looks.
	Rachael Hansel, Postdoctoral Fellow (Materials Science) Rachael is developing an automating the calculation of accurate, efficient and transferrable pseudopotentials for density functional calculations.
	Mike Myers, Ph.D. student (ME) Mike studies ultrasonic and phosphor temperature measurement systems with application in aerospace and manufacturing industries. He recently scrapped a lucrative consulting career to return to school. We wonder about him.
	Terence (Terry) Musho, Ph.D. student (Materials Science) Terry studies quantum transport in complex nanostructures designed for direct energy conversion. He is investigating graded structures, vacuum devices and is concerned with coupled thermal/electrical transport on quantum scales.
	Ebonee Walker, Ph.D. student (Materials Science) Ebonee is increasing our understandng of transport in CNT composites at the molecular scale. She is a SMART fellow.
	Majid al-Dosari, M.S. student (ME) Majid is performing molecular dynamics simulations to learn about how different dopings affect the crystal strain and subsequent emission characteristics.
	Sarah (Sadie) Gollub, Ph.D. student (Materials Science) Sadie is studying how radiation interacts with ceramic materials by studying the luminescent properties of irradiated powders. In particular she fabricates thermographic phosphors and measures the spectroscopic changes induced by various radiation exposures.
	Ariosto Jorge, Visiting Professor (ME) Ariosto hails from Federal University of Itajuba, Itajuba-MG, Brazil, where he studies optimization algorithms and boundary element methods. Here he helps us with the inversion of ultrasonic data.
	Justin Colar, REU student (ME) Justin is a student from Alabama A&M who is workign in our lab for the summer 2011 in the Vanderbilt VINSE REU program. He will be fabricating and characterizing pyrochlores, which are thermographic phosphors that we use to detect radiation.

Alumni

MS/PhD graduates

Nicholas (Nick) Roberts, Ph.D. (ME)

Nick is now a postdoctoral fellow at UTK, but you can find him at the Center for Nanophase Materials Science at Oak Ridge Natioanl Lab. For his PhD project, he used computational techniques to calculate thermal properties of solid-state energy conversion devices. He also uses these methods to investigate thermal rectification effects in nanoscaled asymmetric interfaces.

Rachael Hansel, Ph.D. (Materials Science)

Rachael used experimental and computational methods to determine how luminescent properties of thermographic phosphors(TGP) are affected by temperature. She also studied how TGPs are implemented into thermometry applications.

Anuradha (Anu) Bulusu, Ph.D. (Materials Science)

Anu's research involved modeling coupled electron and phonon transport in mesoscopic systems using a Keldysh formalism (Non-equilibrium Green's functions). Her focus includes interfaces and thermoelectric materials. She is currently working in a research position at Georgia Tech.

Sameer Mahajan, M.S. (Materials Science)

Sameer is continuing his studies as a Ph.D. candidate in another lab at Vanderbilt.

Rich Crim, M.S. (ME)

Rich studied how to measure heating rates using thermographic phosphors. The new technique could be used to estiamte heat fluxes from measured datamore relaiably. He is currently working for an engineering consulting company (Universal Safety Response) in Franklin, TN.

Richard Harvey, M.S. (ME)

Richard (Flanders) is an active duty Navy officer and working on enhanced thermoelectric performance through decentralized control strategies. He is currently working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Aniruddha Marathe, M.S. Spring 2004 (Materials Science)

Ani studied electron transport and scattering in channel regions of MOSFETs. He is currently working for a metallurgical company (Kennametal) in Arkansas.

Parag Vasekar, M.S. Spring 2004 (Materials Science)

Parag developed a lattice Boltzmann solution for phonon transport and generatin in microelectronic devices. He is currently working at Ohio State as a Research Scientist.

Post-doctoral associates

Peter Schmidt (Assistant Professor, UNCC)

Ultrasonic temperature measurements

Yasin Varol (Professor, Turkey)

Yasin worked on convective solutions to pitched roof cooling applications.

Undergraduate and M.Eng. Researchers

Saunak Desai, B.S. (ME)

Saunak fabricated and tested pyrochlores, a material that is usually used as a thermal barrier coating, but can also be used as a thermographic phosphor.

John Heim, B.S. (ME)

John worked on the heating rate measurement system using thermographic phosphors.

Patrick Dupree, B.S. (ME)

Pat started the thermographic phosphor project.

Robert Weller, B.S. (EE)

Rob developed Pyton modules for the manipulation and analysis of electrothermal simulation data for ion-strikes.

Bara Cola, M.Eng. Spring 2002 (ME)

Bara mostly played football for Vanderbilt at the tailback position.

Christina Peabody, B.S. (ME)

Chrissy uses continuum models to predict vibrational spectra of nanoparticles by introducing heterogeneities. She has since received her PhD from Princeton University.

Peter Grant, B.S./M.S. (EE)

Peter built a framework for performing large-scale parallel calculations on graphics processors. He achieved a 400 times speedup for matrix-matrix multiplies compared to the CPU. He also designed a parallelized optimization procedure to locate discontinuities in design space searches.

John Whitney, B.S. (ME)

John is using FLUENT to predict heat transfer and flow instabilities in transformers with nanodiamond additives.

Yu Meng M.Eng. (ME)

Meng worked on electrical and thermal percolation through fiber composites.

James Adams, B.S. (ME)

James performed parametric studies of solar towers using detailed CFD models

Nor Nordini, B.S. (ME)

Nor performed quantum simulations on superlattice structures of alternate materials.

Kristina Kitko, B.S. (ME)

Kristina Helped acquire SEM and TEM images of YAG:Ce nano-crystalline thermographic phosphors

Walter Rudberg, B.S. (ME)

Zev performed detailed geometric studies of plume dispersal at power plants.

Michelle Pugh, B.S. (ME)

Michelle integrated atmospheric meteorological data into a plant-scale CFD simulation of gaseous dispersions.

Alisha Davis, B.S. (ME)

Alisha (along with her design group) performed CFD simulations of datacenters looking for ways to reduce energy costs.

Rizwan Rozlan, B.S. (ME)

Rizwan (along with his design group) performed CFD simulations of datacenters looking for ways to reduce energy costs.

Jessica Keener, B.S. (ME)

Jessica (along with her design group) performed CFD simulations of datacenters looking for ways to reduce energy costs.

Mike Gallagher, B.S. (ME)

Mike (along with his design group) performed CFD simulations of datacenters looking for ways to reduce energy costs.

John Vollmer, B.S. (ME)

John designed a guard heater system for our nanofluid test bed.