NEWS AND ACTIVITIES


2022

  • Dr. Xinfeng Gao has recently been recognized with two awards for her research accomplishments in aerospace. The first, the Mid-Career Advancement (MCA) award, comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and provides research funding to “scientists and engineers at the associate professor rank to substantively enhance and advance their research program through synergistic partnerships.” The second award is the Outstanding Achievement Award for Women in Aerospace, given to Gao for her “success in transforming computational fluid dynamics with data assimilation to advance aerospace propulsion research while mentoring female students in aerospace.”
  • CFD & Propulsion Laboratory at Colorado State University uses quantum computing of CloudBank facilitates at the University of California, San Diego’s San Diego Supercomputer Center to investigate the possibility of using quantum algorithms to approximate the fine-scale dynamics of turbulent flows, something that is extraordinarily difficult and expensive using classical processors.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Yijun Wang on receiving the data scientist position from Huma.AI, Inc. Yijun’s responsibility in the position includes 1) Understanding and exploring with both structured and unstructured data, 2) Establishing data-driven frameworks to solve challenging business problems, 3) Implementing the existing algorithms in Python with fine-tuning and deploying deep learning models for NLP, etc.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Nate Overton on receiving the postdoctoral position from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Starting in August, 2022, Nate will focus on further development of the high-order embedded boundary method for complex geometry representation at his postdoctoral position.
  • Congratulations to Chris Hurst on successfully passing his Ph.D. qualifying examination in July 2022.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Sean Walters on receiving the job offer from Southern Adventist University. Sean will start the job as an assistant professor teaching mechanical engineering courses and also continue the wall-modeled LES research at the university
  • Congratulations to Nate Overton-Katz on successfully passing his Ph.D. defense on May 24, 2022.
  • Congratulations to Scott Polak on successfully passing his Ph.D. defense on March 29, 2022.
  • Congratulations to Sean Walters on successfully passing his Ph.D. defense on February 10, 2022.
  • Congratulations to Yijun Wang on successfully passing his Ph.D. defense on January 12, 2022.

2021

  • Congratulations to Dr. Joshua Christopher for his exciting new postdoctoral position at Argonne National Laboratory.
  • Congratulations to Eric Brodin on successfully passing his Ph.D. qualifying examination in December 2021.
  • Congratulations to Joshua Christopher on successfully passing his Ph.D. defense on September 7, 2021.
  • Congratulations to Nate Overton on successfully passing his Ph.D. preliminary examination in July 2021.
  • Congratulations to Scott Polak on successfully passing his Ph.D. preliminary examination in July 2021.
  • Congratulations to Yijun Wang on successfully passing his Ph.D. preliminary examination in April 2021.
  • Dr. Gao gave a talk on “Space-Time Multigrid for the Maximum Likelihood Ensemble Filter Method” at the 8th International Symposium on Data Assimilation online session on January 8, 2021.

2020

  • Congratulations to Sean Walters on successfully passing his Ph.D. preliminary examination in December 2020.
  • Congratulations to Joshua Christopher on successfully passing his Ph.D. preliminary examination in November 2020.
  • Drs. Gao and Guzik, along with 5 Ph.D. students, Joshua Christopher, Yijun Wang, Nate Overton, Sean Walters, and Christopher Hurst, presented their papers at the 2020 AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition, January 6-10, 2020, Orlando, Florida.

2019

  • Congratulations to Landon Owen on receiving the job offer from Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, California, and starting his position as a postdoctoral scientist in August 2019. Landon will focus on computational modeling of soot formation in high speed and reacting flows at Sandia National Laboratories.
  • Dr. Guzik gave an invited seminar on “Achieving Concurrent Processing of Iterative Algorithms on Heterogeneous Architectures with Task-Based Parallelism” at the Center for Applied Scientific Computing in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on April 8, 2019.
  • Ph.D. student Joshua Christopher presented his research on “Space-time adaptivity with multigrid reduction in time for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations” at the 19th Copper Mountain Conference on Multigrid Methods, March 24-28, 2019, Copper Mountain, Colorado.
  • 2 Ph.D. students, Scott Polak and Sean Walters, presented their papers at the 2019 AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition, January 7-11, 2019, San Diego, California.

2018

  • Congratulations to Landon Owen on successfully passing his Ph.D. defense on December 19, 2018.
  • Ph.D. student Joshua Christopher works at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a visiting graduate student from September 2018 to August 2019.
  • Congratulations to Justin Weinmeister on receiving the job offer from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and starting his position in July 2018.
  • Congratulations to Shumei Yin for being awarded with the 2018-2019 NTU (National Technological University) Fellowship.
  • Congratulations to Sean Walters, Shumei Yin, Nate Overton, and Joshua Christopher on successfully passing their Ph.D. qualifying examination in May 2018.
  • On behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Gao invited Dr. Wolfgang Bangerth from Mathematics Department of Colorado State University, for a departmental seminar on “Complex simulations: from numerical mathematics via software to applications” on April 24, 2018. Our faculty, staff, and students had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Bangerth during his seminar.
  • 3 Ph.D. students, Scott Polak, Shumei Yin, Sean Walters, and 1 M.S. student, Justin Weinmeister, presented their papers at the 2018 AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition, January 8-12, 2018, Kissimmee, Florida.

2017

  • Graduate student Justin Weinmeister presented at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics (APS DFD) meeting on November 21, 2017 in Denver, Colorado. The talk was on Uncertainty Quantification for Combined Polynomial Chaos Kriging Surrogate Models and discussed our recent progress in fitting our new RPC-K surrogate model to a convection-diffusion-reaction problem under normally distributed inputs.
  • On behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Drs. Gao and Guzik invited Dr. Jacob Schroder from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for a departmental seminar on “Parallel-in-Time: A Scalable and Non-Intrusive Approach with Multigrid” on November 14, 2017. Our faculty, staff, and students had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Schroder during his stay on campus.
  • Ph.D. student Yijun Wang presented his paper at the Western States Section Combustion Institute 2017 Fall Technical Meeting on October 2, 2017 in University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.
  • Ph.D. student Yijun Wang presented his paper at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Central States Section 2017 Annual Meeting on October 1, 2017 in Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.
  • Congratulations to Sean Walters and Shumei Yin for being awarded with the CSU 2017 Walter Scott, Jr. Graduate Fellowship. These fellowships are awarded to a small number of exceptional graduate students in the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering.
  • Ph.D. student Sean Walters presented his research on “Computational Predictions of Forces on Autorotors at High Reynolds Numbers” at the 6th Metacomp Symposium, September 19-21, 2017, Redondo Beach, California.
  • Congratulations to Landon Owen on successfully passing his Ph.D. preliminary examination in August 2017.
  • Congratulations to Scott Polak and Yijun Wang on successfully passing their Ph.D. qualifying examination in August 2017.
  • 4 Ph.D. students, Landon Owen, Yijun Wang, Nate Overton, Sean Walters, and 1 M.S. student, Justin Weinmeister presented their papers at the 23rd AIAA Computational Fluid Dynamics Conference, June 5-9, 2017, Denver, Colorado.
  • Dr. Gao gave an invited talk on “CFD Modeling of Combustion with Data Assimilation” at the Fluids Seminar of Stanford University on April 25, 2017. She spent quality time interacting with the engineering students and faculty during her stay on campus.

2016

  • Congratulations to Ph.D. student Jordan Riley on successfully passing his qualifying examination in December 2016.
  • Congratulations to Yijun Wang for being awarded with the 2016-2017 NTU (National Technological University) Fellowship. The NTU Fellowship is a prestigious scholarship that is awarded to only 1 recipient in the College of Engineering each year.
  • Dr. Gao presented “Properties of a Modified Ensemble Kalman Filter Algorithm for Combustion Application” at the 46th AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference, June 13-17, 2016, Washington, DC.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Catherine Olschanowsky for starting her new position as an assistant professor at Boise State University in August 2016.
  • Congratulations to Ph.D. student Landon Owen on successfully passing his qualifying examination in May 2016.
  • Congratulations to Tyler Schott for receiving the job offer from Blue Origin and starting his position in July 2016.
  • Congratulations to Nathan Spotts for receiving the job offer from Woondward Inc. and starting his position in May 2016.
  • Drs. Gao and Guzik, along with 5 graduate students, Landon Owen, Jordan Riley, Joshua Christopher, Nathan Spotts, and Yijun Wang, attended the 54th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, January 4-8, 2016, San Diego, Califonia. Six research papers were presented, including topics on data assimilation, high-order combustion algorithm, fourth-order viscous operators on mapped grids, anisotropic mesh refinement, and numerical assessment of turbulence models for rotating flows.

2015

  • Dr. Gao gave an invited talk on “Estimation of Flame Speed Model Parameter Using Ensemble Kalman Filter Algorithm” at University of Colorado Boulder Fluid and Thermal Sciences Seminar on November 10, 2015.
  • Drs. Gao and Guzik were pleased to visit Dr. Dimitri Mavriplis and his research group at University of Wyoming and give a departmental seminar on “High-Performance CFD Algorithms and Implementations for Simulation of Aerospace Propulsion Systems on Next Generation Computer Architectures” on April 9, 2015.
  • Dr. Gao served on one of the proposal review panels for National Science Foundation, January 29-30, 2015, Arlington, Virginia.
  • Dr. Gao presented “A Fourth-Order Scheme for the Compressible Navier-Stokes Equations”, and co-chaired session of “High-Order Methods” at the AIAA SciTech meeting, January 5-9, 2015, Florida.

2014

  • On behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Gao invited Dr. Dimitri Mavriplis from University of Wyoming, for a departmental seminar on “Computational Methods for Aerodynamic Analysis and Design” on February 10, 2014. Our faculty, staff, and students had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Mavriplis during his stay on campus.
  • Dr. Gao presented “A Fourth-Order Boundary Treatment for Viscous Fluxes on Cartesian Grid Finite-Volume Methods” at the AIAA SciTech meeting, January 13-17, 2014, Maryland.

2013

  • On behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Gao invited Dr. Clinton Groth from University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, for a departmental seminar on “Parallel Implicit Adaptive Mesh Refinement Scheme for Unsteady Fully-Compressible Laminar Reactive Flows” on October 4, 2013. Our faculty, staff, and students had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Groth during his stay on campus.
  • On behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Gao invited Dr. Russ Cummings from United States Air Force Academy for a departmental seminar on “Unsteady Aerodynamics Modeling for Aircraft Maneuvers: A New Approach Using Time-Dependent Surrogate Modeling” on September 23, 2013. Our faculty, staff, and students had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Cummings during his stay on campus.
  • Dr. Gao was named the Rockwell Professor. The Rockwell Anderson Endowed Professorship was established at Colorado State University in 1989 and was named in honor of Robert Anderson, CEO of Rockwell International Corporation at that time. Colorado State University and the Demartment of Mechanical Engineering were proud to announce the year 2013’s recipient – Dr. Xinfeng Gao.
  • Dr. Gao gave an invited talk for the Department of Mathematics at CSU on May 9, 2013 on “A Fourth-Order Finite-Volume Scheme with Parallel Adaptive Mesh Refinement for Computational Combustion”.
  • Dr. Gao chaired the Gas Turbine Engines session 9 at the 49th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit, July 15-17, 2013, San Jose, California.
  • Graduate student Nathan Spotts presented his research on “A CFD Study of Compressible Flow through Convergent-Conical Nozzles” at the 49th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit, July 15-17, 2013, San Jose, California.
  • On behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Gao invited Prof. Chung K. Law from Princeton University for a departmental seminar on “Some Fundamental Combustion Problems of Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Interest” on April 5, 2013. Our faculty, staff, and students had the opportunity to interact with Prof. Law during his stay on campus.
  • On behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Gao and Dr. Guzik invited Dr. Bill Henshaw from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for a departmental seminar on “The Numerical Solution of Fluid Structure Interaction Problems on Overlapping Grids” on April 12, 2013. Our faculty, staff, and students had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Henshaw during his stay on campus.
  • Dr. Guzik presented “An Adaptive Mesh Refinement Strategy with Conservative Space-Time Coupling for the Lattice-Boltzmann Method” at the 51st Aerospace Sciences Meeting, January 7-10, 2013, Grapevine, Texas.
  • Dr. Gao chaired the session of “Combustion Technologies I” at the 51st Aerospace Sciences Meeting, January 7-10, 2013, Grapevine, Texas.
  • Ph.D. student John Kreuder presented “Computation of Convective and Radiative Heat Transfer from an Impinging Flame Jet to a Plane Surface” at the 51st Aerospace Sciences Meeting, January 7-10, 2013, Grapevine, Texas.

2012

  • Dr. Gao and Dr. Guzik visited the Woodward Company and presented our CFD and propulsion research capabilities in the CSU-Woodward seminar for future research collaboration, August 27, 2012, Fort Collins, Colorado.
  • Dr. Gao and Dr. Guzik presented their work on numerical algorithms at the FRCRC Second Annual Front Range High Performance Computing Symposium, August 13-14, 2012, at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. The work, in collaboration with both the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, was about “A Fourth-Order Finite-Volume Method for Compressible Navier-Stokes Equations with Adaptive Mesh Refinement” and “A Programming Model Framework Based on the Rose Compiler to Advance Heterogeneous Computing for Engineering Applications”.
  • Nathan Spotts presented his CFD study of compressible flow through convergent-conical nozzles at the 1st AIAA Propulsion Aerodynamics Workshop, July 29, 2012, Atlanta, Georgia. The workshop, held in conjunction with the 48th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit and 10th International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, provided a forum for the assessment and discussion of current CFD capabilities, as applied to air breathing propulsion systems.
  • Ph.D. student John Kreuder attended the Princeton University Combustion Summer School from June 24 to June 29, 2012. The program was a week long seminar during which experts in the field of combustion science give lectures. The topics included combustion theory, combustion chemistry, internal combustion engines, and some contemporary topics as well.
  • On behalf of Dr. H J Siegel, Dr. Pat Burns, and Dr. Bryan Willson, Dr. Xinfeng Gao was pleased to invite Dr. Phillip Colella from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Applied Numerical Algorithms Group to come to Colorado State University (CSU) in the spring of 2012 to be an ISTeC (Information Science and Technology Center) Distinguished Lecturer. ISTeC is a university-wide organization for promoting, facilitating, and enhancing CSU’s research, education, and outreach activities pertaining to the design and innovative application of computer, communication, and information systems. Our faculty, staff, and students had the opportunity to interact with Dr. Colella during his stay on campus from April 9 to 13, 2012.
  • Dr. Gao attended the 50th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition, January 9-12, 2012, Nashville, Tennessee.

2011

  • Dr. Gao oragnized a CFD workshop with Boeing Company, November 10-11, 2011, Fort Collins, Colorado.
  • Dr. Gao served on one of the proposal review panels for National Science Foundation, November 8-9, 2011, Arlington, Virginia.