People
If you are interested in joining us, we encourage you to look at our Research for more details about our areas of research and contact ltrac.info@ucalgary.ca with your interests and any relevant coursework or research experience.
Principal Investigator
Dr. Robert Martinuzzi
Dr. Eric Limacher
Doctoral Students
André Popinhak
André studied mechanical engineering at Santa Catarina State University (UDESC) and had the opportunity to expand his knowledge of thermofluid dynamics through an internship at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE). For his master's degree in mechanical engineering at Santa Catarina Federal University (UFSC), André focused on studying turbulent natural convection in enclosed cavities. He also gained practical experience in the industry by working as a development engineer in compressor thermodynamics at Whirlpool (EMBRACO). At Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), André specialized in state-of-the-art Tomographic-PIV applied to road vehicles aerodynamics. Currently, André is pursuing his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the University of Calgary's LTRAC. His expertise consists of experimental measurement techniques in fluid mechanics such as laser doppler velocimetry (LDV), particle image velocimetry (PIV), tomographic PIV, pressure, force, and temperature sensors. His Ph.D. topic of research is pressure sensor-based estimation of velocity in bluff body wake flows. Contact Google Scholar LinkedIn
Ali Mohammadi
Ali earned his bachelor and master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology in Iran, where his research projects centered on the design, simulation, and analysis of the flow field in an axial flow fan with two contra-rotating rotors. In 2015, he joined Sabanci University in Turkey, where he focused on analysis of the flow field inside micro-pin-fin heat sinks and visualization of cavitation patterns in liquid jets exiting micro and nano tubes. In 2017, Ali joined the LTRAC, co-supervised by Prof. Robert Martinuzzi and Prof. Chris Morton. Here, his research is focused on analyzing the wake region behind cantilevered square cylinders using analytical techniques, such as proper orthogonal decomposition. Ali's future interests lie in conducting research on renewable energy, specifically in wind and solar energy. Contact Google Scholar LinkedIn
Maziyar Hassanpour
Maziyar works on the fundamental physics of turbulent flows. He develops direct numerical simulations for two problem set-ups: a cylinder near a plane boundary using high-order spectral-hp methods and a wall-mounted triangular prism using finite volume methods. He utilizes modal energy analysis and resolvent analysis together with nonlinear dynamics principles to investigate self-sustained processes underlying the production and dissipation of turbulence. By connecting these processes to vortex dynamics, Maziyar seeks to unravel the intricate physical transformations that govern the evolution of turbulent flows.
Kenneth Hinh
Kenneth is a Ph.D. student developing optical techniques such as high-speed particle image velocimetry (PIV) and Schlieren to investigate compressible turbulent shear flows. Turbulent shear flows including free and confined jets have significant aerospace applications such as supersonic ejectors, ram-jet intakes and thrust augmentation devices and detailed experimental investigation is necessary to understand the underlying physics governing the flows which lead to optimized design of these devices. Kenneth completed his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Calgary in 2020 and is co-supervised with Dr. Craig Johansen from the Aerospace and Compressible Flow Research Group (AeroCore).
Hamed Rahmati Aydenlou
Hamed is a Ph.D. student at the Schulich School of Engineering. His main interest lies in applying Artificial Intelligence methods in fluid flow analysis. Currently, his research is focused on data-driven analysis of forward-facing step geometry using Machine and Deep learning methods, specifically Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). He received a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering of Biosystems from Urmia University. Additionally, he has a Master's degree in mechanical engineering (Heat Fluid) from Istanbul Technical University and he has conducted a thesis project as a research assistant at RWTH Aachen University. Outside of his research, he enjoys jogging, running, swimming, listening to music, and watching documentaries.
Xinyang Liu (Lucy)
Xinyang Liu (Lucy) is a current Ph.D. student in Mathematics at University of Calgary. She completed her B.Sc. and M.Sc. studies in Mathematics at Sichuan University, China and the University of Calgary, respectively. Her research interests are reduced-order modeling and system identification, including their applications in fluid dynamics. In her M.Sc. (supervised by Dr. Tony Ware) her research focused on the application of scientific machine learning methods in epidemiology with assistance from the Long's lab (led by Dr. Quan Long). She's also working with the Wastewater-based Epidemiology (WBE) group in the University of Calgary, which is an interdisciplinary research group led by Dr. Michael Parkins and Dr. Casey Hubert. Outside of her research, she enjoys crocheting.
Master's Students
Scott Webber
Scott Webber is a graduate student (MSc) in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary. His research deals with the experimentation and modelling of oscillating pipes and internal pipe flows, as well as low-SNR detection. He received his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering with a Mechatronics Minor from the University of Calgary. In addition to his studies, he enjoys manufacturing and fabricating off-road vehicles, specifically for the Schulich Off-Road Baja SAE team at the University of Calgary.
Michel Hardika
Michel is a graduate student (MSc) in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary. His area of research is in modelling vortex induced vibrations (VIV) near different curved and flat boundaries. Along with other colleagues from LTRAC, he collects experimental VIV position and force data, alongside particle image velocity (PIV) images in the University of Calgary water channel. With this data, Michel uses methods to develop and calibrate reduced order models to predict the VIV response. Outside of research, he enjoys following the latest developments in aerodynamics in sports and travelling abroad.
Kevin Manohar
Kevin is a graduate student (MSc) in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary. He is investigating turbulent separated flow reconstruction/super-resolution strategies from unsteady surface-pressure measurements using deep learning algorithms. He designed and built an instrumentation system as well as conducted a large-scale particle image velocimetry (PIV) campaign on the Boeing Bump in the 3’x3’ subsonic wind tunnel at the University of Washington. He is currently on a fellowship at the École CentraleSupélec (Paris, France), where he is developing state-of-the-art deep learning architectures on high-fidelity direct numerical simulation (DNS) datasets of turbulent flow over a forward-facing step geometry. Prior to joining LTRAC, Kevin received a BSc in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Calgary, where he served as captain of Schulich AeroDesign. He completed a year-long internship at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland), where he studied low-dimensional characteristics of turbulent jets and assisted with planar and stereographic PIV measurements in a large-scale nuclear containment facility. Apart from research, he is an avid pianist and enjoys backpacking/hiking and trail running. Google Scholar Contact
Emil Larose
Emil is graduate student (M.Sc.) in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary. His research is focused on experimentally investigating separated flow physics by means Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and surface pressure measurements. Prior to joining LTRAC, he received a B.A.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering (Co-op) from the University of Ottawa, and cumulatively spent 24-months working in the Aerodynamics Laboratory of the National Research Council Canada (NRC). Outside of his research, Emil is passionate about ski racing, sports and travel. Contact LinkedIn
Isaac Rosin
Isaac Rosin is a Master of Science student in the Department of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering. He is originally from Bellevue, Washington, and has resided in Vancouver, BC, since 2010. Prior to his MSc, Isaac completed a BSc (Honours) in physics with a Minor in mathematics at the University of Calgary. During his undergraduate degree, Isaac discovered his interest in numerical simulation and fluid dynamics through his computational physics classes, which prompted him to approach Dr. Robert Martinuzzi for supervision of his Honours thesis. The subject of his thesis was a numerical investigation into the effects of spanwise end conditions on the wake structure of a thin flat plate normal to a uniform flow at low Reynolds numbers. He now continues this same investigation with Dr. Martinuzzi for his MSc thesis. He is co-supervised by Dr. Bartosz Protas of McMaster University. Outside of his research, Isaac is an avid player and instructor of golf, he studies Spanish, and enjoys design, history, and travel.
Ethan Kirkby
Ethan Kirkby is a M.Sc. student in the Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering department at the University of Calgary. Prior to his Master’s studies, Ethan received a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Calgary in 2023. He has also worked as a researcher at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland from 2021 to 2022, working on mixing phenomena of stratified flows and proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of turbulent jets. His current research focuses on experimentally investigating separated flow physics by using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), including two-plane PIV.