FACULTY RESEARCH AND STAFF
Dr. Michael Ohadi
Director, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and CEEE Founding Faculty Member
Dr. Ohadi is a CEEE founding faculty member and founder of the Advanced Heat Exchangers and Process Intensification Consortium. He is internationally recognized for his research in heat and mass transfer and smart energy systems . He is the inventor/co-inventor of eight issued U.S. patents and has published more than 150 refereed technical publications. Dr. Ohadi has actively participated in promoting the support for fostering technological innovation and entrepreneurship. In 2002, he was featured in Washington Post for his efforts involving innovation and technology transfer. From 2003 to 2010 he was on leave assignment to the Petroleum Institute (Abu Dhabi) where served as Director of Mechanical Engineering (2003-2006) and Provost and Acting President (2006 to 2010). He is a fellow member of both ASME and ASHRAE and has won numerous awards from both societies.
Dr. Amir Shooshtari
Research Associate Professor
Amir H. Shooshtari is an Associate Research Professor in the Advanced Heat Exchangers and Process Intensification Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his Ph.D. in 2004 in Mechanical Engineering. Since 2005, he has been a member of research faculty at the University of Maryland. His research interests include design and development of advanced thermofluid processes, electronic cooling, two-phase flow and fluid flow in porous media. Dr. Shooshtari is the author or co-author of over 20 publications in international journals and conferences. He is a member of ASHARE and ASME. He is recipient of ASHRAE Grant-in-aid Fellowship (2003–2004) and ASHRAE National Capital Chapter Scholarship Award (2003).
Dr. Raphael Mandel
Assistant Research Scientist
Raphael Mandel joined the S2TS lab as an undergraduate research assistant in winter 2010. After graduating with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland in spring 2010, Raphael elected to stay with the S2TS lab as a graduate research assistant in order to pursue his Ph.D. As a graduate student, Raphael has received numerous awards, including the Dean’s Fellowship, ASHRAE Graduate Grant-In-Aid Award, EMERC Hulka Energy Research Fellowship, and L-3 Graduate Fellowship. In addition, Raphael was accepted into the Future Faculty Program and served as a Future Faculty Fellow, where he mentored graduate students and co-taught a course with a faculty member. In his dissertation research, Raphael developed and modeled a novel cooling concept utilizing Film Evaporation with Enhanced fluid Delivery System (FEEDS), capable of achieving high heat fluxes (>1kW/cm2) and heat densities (>490W/cm3) at high vapor qualities (>85%) and moderate pressure drops. He is currently employed as an Assistant Research Scientist in S2TS, where he serves as technical lead on numerous projects, and has authored or co-authored more than 25 publications in international journals and conferences.
Dr. Ratnesh Tiwari
Assistant Research Professor
Dr. Ratnesh Tiwari received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Maryland in 2015. He received his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, India in 2006. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, Dr. Tiwari has worked in the process and oil and gas industry for more than six years in the area of Heat Exchanger design and process development. He has extensive experience of designing experimental loops related to thermo fluidic systems, microchannel heat exchangers and micro reactor design and building energy modeling. He is currently involved in design and development of low cost microchannel heat exchangers for industrial system. He is also working on techno economic analysis and market analysis of the ongoing research projects.
CURRENT Ph.D. STUDENTS
Sevket Yuruker
Sevket obtained his BSc in Mechanical Engineering in 2015 from Ozyegin University – Turkey, with his thesis focusing on optothermal characterization of LEDs. He was then admitted to University of Maryland as a graduate research assistant and completed his MSc in 2017 focusing on thermoelectric cooling of high heat flux hotspots. After working as a thermal engineer at a private aerospace company in Turkey, he joined SSTS in 2018 to pursue his PhD in Mechanical Engineering. His current research topic is modeling and experimental characterization of manifold microchannel systems for cooling of high power electronics.
Zhengda Yao
Zhengda Yao joined S2TS lab as a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering in 2019 after completing his B.S. in Harbin Engineering University. In the fourth year of his Undergraduate degree, he conducted simulations based on turbulent flow. In University of Maryland, his field is about computational fluid dynamics and experiments about additive manufacturing. Currently, he is working on topology optimizations of heart exchangers with CFD Software.
Gargi Kailkhura
Gargi Kailkhura is currently pursuing Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering as a Graduate Research Assistant at S2ST, since Spring 2018. She works on the Design, Testing and Analysis of Composite Polymer Heat Exchangers (HX) with varied applications like for electronics and power plants cooling. Her research includes optimization of HX, performing its CFD simulations and conducting experimental testing of the HX. She is also a student member of ASME and ASHRAE. She completed her MS from Arizona State University and B.Tech. from National Institute of Technology Surat, India.
Harsimranjit Singh
GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
Thirumalesha Adarsh Gudluru
Adarsh is currently pursuing M.Eng in Energy Systems Engineering from UMD. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Pune University. He is working as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Project of Energy Audit of the Data Centers of UMD. In the project, his work involves the Energy analysis, modeling on the simulation software & proposing Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) alongside their implementation.
Soumya Agrawal
Soumya is currently pursuing M.Eng in Mechanical Engineering from UMD. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from RGPV University. He is working as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Project of Energy Audit on Maryland Government Buildings. His work involved Energy Utility analysis, modeling using eQuest software and proposing Energy conservation measures (ECMs).
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
Alexander Dessiatoun
Alexander Dessiatoun, also known as Sasha, is an undergraduate research assistant for the S2TS lab. He is currently an undergraduate student in the mechanical engineering field. His work focuses on helping graduate students with experimental test setups, research, and design implementation.
WEBSITE DEVELOPER AND ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
Akash Dewan
Akash has been working as a Website and Developer and Administrative Assistant with the ST2S lab since June 2020. He is currently pursuing his Masters in Advanced Engineering in Cybersecurity. He has over 3 years of work experience as an Application Security Analyst and a Systems Engineer. He is an alumni of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India where he graduated from in 2016 as a Computer Science Engineer.
ALUMNI
Nail Rachidi
Nail Rachidi joined S2TS lab on June 2016 as a graduate research assistant. After graduating with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Philadelphia University located in Philadelphia, Nail decided to pursue his Professional Master degree in Mechanical Engineering with a focus in Sustainable Energy/ Energy Efficiency from University of Maryland. He was a student member of ASHRAE. Nail’s project under UMD comprised of analyzing energy consumption of commercial and residential UMD campus buildings and implementing energy conservation measures when possible.
Dana Savage
Dana Savage joined the S2TS team in the fall of 2014 in pursuit of a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering. He received a Bachelor’s of Arts in Mathematics from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in the May of 2012. Since joining the ST2S team, Dana has assisted with multiple projects including investigations of heat exchanger fabrication with additive manufacturing. Under UMD, Dana’s research focuses on improving energy efficiency at UMD by directing detailed energy audits and modeling of energy-intensive campus buildings.
Adhiraj Singh
Adhiraj joined University of Maryland, College Park to pursue Masters in Chemical Engineering, after completing his Bachelors in Chemical Engineering from India. His work here was focused on Energy Modeling and Audit of residential buildings on campus of University of Maryland, College Park. He diagnosed energy and water consumption in select high energy consuming, complex buildings and made recommendations that enhanced energy savings and reduce carbon footprint significantly.
Xiao Lin
Xiao Lin joined the S2TS lab as an undergraduate research assistant in Spring 2016 while pursuing her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Statistics at the University of Maryland. Currently, her research focus is energy audit of high consuming buildings, aiming to improve energy efficiency and benefit the sustainability of the UMD campus. The project involves energy consumption analysis, modeling of HVAC systems, and proposing possible Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs).
Raja Sampath
Raja was a Master of Engineering student in Mechanical Engineering at University of Maryland. He has graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Madras with a Dual Degree in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Energy Technology. Prior to joining the S2TS team in February 2017, Raja has worked with Mercedes Benz R&D India, Bengaluru, in component-level CFD simulations of conjugate heat transfer. Under S2TS he was involved in Energy Audit of Data Centers in UMD.
Daniel Bae
Daniel Bae was working as an undergraduate research assistant at the S2TS lab the summer of 2014. He obtained a B.S. in mechanical engineering and physics at the University of Maryland College Park. He participated in the Mechanical Engineering Department’s BS-MS program and elected to pursue his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering starting Fall 2015. Daniel actively contributed to the embedded Force-Fed Microgrooved Heat Exchanger (FFMHE) technology research, where he was involved in optimizing the fluid conditions and the geometry of the microgrooved heat exchanger to further improve two-phase cooling systems.
Ramin Moradi
Ramin was a graduate research assistant in S2TS lab. He joined the Smart and Small Thermal Systems Laboratory on september 2016, pursuing his Ph.D in the field of fluid mechanics and heat transfer after getting his BSc in mechanical engineering from Sharif University of Technology located in Tehran, Iran. He was working on design, manufacturing and reliability of a Novel polymer composite heat exchanger for power plant cooling.
Ji Bae
Ji joined the AHX-PI lab as a graduate research assistant in Fall 2015. He contributed to the embedded Force-Fed Microgrooved Heat Exchanger (FFMHE) technology research by performing a wide range of microfabrication work as well as testing and analysis on micro-scaled heat exchanger designs. He obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at UMD and is now pursuing his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at UMD as well. Ji is currently employed at CMTA, which is an MEP engineering consulting firm located in Arlington, VA
Amar Vamsi Krishna
Amar is a recent graduate of the Master of Science in Systems Engineering program at the University of Maryland. His primary interests are wearable robotics and human-robot interface. Amar was a part of the Energy Audit Team at the S2TS, working on the energy audit of on-campus Data-Centers. His work has led to a publication of 1 conference paper. Amar plans to publish another journal paper in the near future. Post graduating from the Clark School of Engineering, he would be working as a Control Systems Engineer for a Baltimore based Rehabilitation Robotics startup called NextStep Robotics. Amar has an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from RNS Institute of Technology (Affiliate of the Visvesvaraya Technological University), India. He has a keen interest and rich experience working with Start-ups and being a part of the early pool of engineers developing real-world products.
Aachala Singhan
Aachala Singhan is currently pursuing her masters in Telecommunication Engineering at University Of Maryland, College Park. She joined the S2TS team in Spring 2018 and has since then handled the administrative tasks associated with S2TS. She has also contributed to the data analysis and documentation for the Energy Audits. In addition, Aachala was also responsible for the implementation of the updated website of S2TS.
Stefan Bangerth
Stefan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering. The focus of his dissertation is the development of compact absorber for absorption heat pumps. He has also worked on gas sweetening with a microchannel reactor and building energy modeling projects. For the 2016-17 academic year, Stefan served as President of the ASHRAE UMD Student Chapter. Stefan is the recipient of numerous awards, including the All-S.T.A.R Fellowship for outstanding scholarship and high-impact contributions as a graduate assistant.
David Deisenroth
David Deisenroth joined the S2TS lab as a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering in 2014 after completing his B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering at Michigan Technological University. David has worked on polymer heat exchanger projects, including exploration of novel manufacturing methods and thermal enhancements polymers. Currently, he is working on two-phase flow visualization to better characterization of flow dynamics in high heat flux electronics cooling systems.
Xiang Zhang
Xiang Zhang joined S2TS lab as an undergraduate research assistant as a part of his B.S/ M.S joint program in Spring 2014. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Maryland (Sep 2011 – May 2014). Xiang was selected as a recipient of an ASHRAE Graduate Student Grant-In-Aid for the 2015- 2016 academic year from a group of highly qualified applicants. Xiang’s current research work is to take advantage of metal additive manufacturing technology to fabricate novel heat/mass exchanger which can be used for power plant or aerospace applications, and to test the heat exchanger prototypes under high temperature conditions.
David Hymas
David Hymas joined the S2TS lab as an Undergraduate Research Assistant and is currently working as a Graduate Research Assistant perusing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. He is a student member of ASME, ASHRAE and Pi Tau Sigma. His research focuses on the development of Embedded Fiber Composite Additive Manufacturing and Polymer Composite Heat Exchangers with support from Arpa-E’s project ARID. His main research interests focus on the development of Additive Manufacturing Processes and their relation to the field of heat transfer as well as the development of Advanced Mechatronic Systems and UMD’s patent pending Cross-Media Fiber Heat Exchanger.
Marvyn Mac
Marvyn Mac joined S2TS lab in 2016 as an intern in order to carry out his final project internship. He is currently a student of EPF Graduate School of engineering in Troyes (France), pursuing his fifth year at the University of Maryland for 6 months.His work consists of collecting and gathering data for energy audit. In addition, he analyzes the energy consumption of a complex building and models it with the software Energy plus
Akhilesh Somani
Akhilesh Somani joined the S2TS lab as a summer research intern in May 2018. He recently finished his junior year as a mechanical undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay. His work at the lab involves working on the composite polymer heat exchanger and helping develop an experimental setup to test its working. He works with graduate students and assists them in conducting experiments, simulations, and compilation of data. He was recently awarded the Undergraduate Research Award by IIT Bombay for his contributions to a project in the field of geophysical fluid dynamics. He has previously worked at the University of California, Berkeley as a summer research intern in 2017 after his sophomore year.
Snehal Bedmutha
Snehal Bedmutha is an Website Developer and Administrative Assistant the S2TS lab. She is currently a graduate student in the Electrical and Computer engineering field. She handles the updated website of S2TS and also manages administrative tasks associated with S2TS
Mehul Patel
Mehul is pursuing his Master degree in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland. He has completed Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from the Gujarat University, India. At Murdoch University in Australia, Mehul was working on design & analysis, engineering consultancy, performance modelling & simulation, and commercial testing of energy systems and their components. His skillset extends to evaluating the reliability of system components through monitoring of field output as well as laboratory testing focusing on the electrical, mechanical and thermal performance. Currently at S2TS he is working as a graduate research assistant for the Project of Energy audit of data centers on UMD campus.
Aldrich Ruel Raja Raja
Aldrich graduated with a Master’s program in Energy Systems Engineering in May 2019. He joined the S2TS lab as a Graduate Assistant in December 2018. He was a part of the Energy Audit Team which focuses on ASHRAE Level 2 of high energy-consuming buildings at the UMD campus. His work involved Energy Utility analysis, modeling using eQuest software and proposing Energy conservation measures (ECMs). He was also an active member of the Association of Energy Engineers Student Chapter at UMD.
Ameya Upadhyay
Ameya Upadhyay graduated with a Master’s degree in Sustainable Energy Engineering under the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland in May 2019. He holds a Bachelors degree in Mechanical engineering from NMIMS, India. Alongside his studies, his passion for Sustainable Resources and its application drove him to take up a diligent role in the society and city council (Mumbai, India) to undertake waste management problems. He had been involved in Conceiving and Launching the New Start-Up, ‘Watt on Earth’ focusing on manufacturing, design, and installation of Solar Roof Top Power Plants. His previous work defined his experience in an array of divisions in the renewable sector. At S2TS he was working as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Project of Energy Audit of data centers on UMD campus.
Ronak Shah
Ronak Shah graduated in May 2019 with a Master’s of Engineering degree in Sustainable Energy. He worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at S2TS lab from June-2018. He was involved in performing ASHRAE’s Level-2 Energy Audit on buildings and analyzing energy consumption of buildings and developing energy models. Besides, Ronak is also proposing efficient Energy Conservation Measures (ECM) under S2TS lab.
Vishnu Babu
Vishnu joined the S2TS lab as a Graduate Assistant in Spring 2018. He was a part of the Energy Audit Team which focuses on ASHRAE Level 2 of high energy-consuming buildings at the UMD campus. Vishnu’s work involved Energy Utility analysis, modeling using the energy management software and proposing Energy conservation measures (ECMs) and Energy Efficiency Measures (EEMs). He graduated from UMD in May 2019.
Arpit Agarwal
Arpit joined the lab as a summer research intern in May 2019. At that time, he was pursuing a Dual Degree in Mechanical Engineering in Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He specializes in Thermal Engineering. At AHXPI, he was working on the metallic heat exchanger project. His task involved testing the thermal performance of the heat exchangers in different temperature and pressure conditions. Apart from that, he also did numerical simulation for the headers to get an idea of flow maldistribution and pressure drop.
Hadi Keramati
Hadi Keramati joined S2TS lab as a graduate research assistant in Spring 2017. He received his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran and decided to continue with his PhD degree at University of Maryland. He was also a student member of ASHRAE. His research interests included self-assembly, flow visualization, electro-osmotic, and heat transfer. His current research involves numerical and experimental assessment to optimize the latest generation heat exchangers, utilizing UMD’s patented manifold-microchannel technology and Additive Manufacturing technique.
Ishita Shahi
Ishita had joined the S2TS Lab in February 2019 as a Website and Developer and Administrative Assistant. She is currently pursuing a professional master’s course in the Electrical and Computer Engineering track. She was working to build up the new website of the lab. She completed her Bachelors in Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology in India.
Jason Kelly
Jason obtained his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2010 and Masters in Engineering Management from the same school in 2015. Before joining CEEE, Jason worked as a Mechanical Engineer for Department of Defense contractor, specializing in mechanical design of Unmanned Air Vehicles and shelter control systems. He was a master’s student working in the fields of energy auditing and energy management in buildings. His interests include efficient energy usage strategies in buildings, novel heat exchanger systems, and computational methods in heat transfer and fluid mechanics.
Zach Ferraro
Zach joined the S2TS lab as an undergraduate research assistant in Fall 2017 while pursuing his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland. His responsibilities include creating meshes for heat transfer and fluid dynamics simulation, running those meshes through simulations, and automating some of those processes entirely. He is currently working with a graduate student to make computational analysis of manifold microchannels more efficient.
Dr. Martinus Arie
Dr. Martinus A Arie joined CEEE’s research faculty as a post-doctorate researcher in 2016. At his time in UMD, he was assigned to the Smart and Small Thermal Systems Laboratory (S2TS) and at the Terrapin Works Center of Additive Manufacturing at the University of Maryland. Dr. Arie received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from UMD. His areas of expertise are heat transfer, fluid dynamics, heat exchangers, numerical modeling, and design optimization. In addition, Dr. Arie is also an expert in additive manufacturing technique such as Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) and Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS). His projects include development of high performance advance metallic, polymer, and composite heat exchangers using additive manufacturing techniques.
Dr. Farah Singer
Dr. Singer is a Research Associate and Co-director of AHX-PI Consortium. She joined AHX-PI in February 2016. Dr. Singer received her PhD in Engineering from the University of Poitiers in France, in 2014, and Master’s degree in Physics from the Lebanese University in Beirut, in 2011. Her areas of expertise include heat transfer, thermal management, additive manufacturing, energy audit of buildings and data centers, project management and coordination.
Soumyaa Passari
Soumyaa has been working as a Website and Developer and Administrative Assistant with the ST2S lab since September 2019. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Science in Telecommunications Engineering majoring in Networking. She was previously a research assistant with the ECE department at Clarke School of Engineering. She is an alumni of Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India where she graduated from in 2018 as an Electronics Engineer.
Fabio Battaglia
Fabio Battaglia joined S2TS for the first time in 2014 for his master thesis project. After persuading his M.S. in Energy Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in Italy, he joined the lab for a second internship in the Summer 2016. Starting from Spring 2017, he is a graduate research assistant and also an ASHRAE member. His researches at the UMD involved enhanced cooling system for power electronic devices, experimental two-phase flow characterization and energy consumption modelling of building on campus to reduce the energy consumption trough energy conservation measures.
Devashis M Shreshtha
Devashis joined S2TS in the spring of 2018. He is pursuing MS in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Energy Systems. He completed his Bachelors’ degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, India. Before joining our lab, he worked in a Renewable Energy firm, working on various off grid power generation projects. He is currently working as a Research Assistant on Energy Audit Projects. Currently, his focus lies on analyzing Energy consumption of Buildings, Energy Management and modeling using the energy management software and proposing Energy Conservation measures (ECM) and Energy Efficiency Measures (EEM) for optimum utilization of resources.
Sai Manish
Sai Manish Vathsavai is currently pursuing M.S.in Mechanical Engineering. He joined S2TS lab as a graduate research assistant in fall 2017. He Received his B.Tech. from Manipal institute of technology, India. His research focus is on the Multistage Manifold Microchannel Heat Exchanger project(M3HX). His work involves design, analysis and experimentation of compact and low charge Heat exchangers for chillers and other applications. His previous work at S2TS involved energy consumption modelling of buildings to reduce the energy consumption, through energy conservation measures.
Elias
