Researchers | WindSTAR I/UCRC

Composites / Materials

Alireza Amirkhizi (UMass Lowell) – Mechanics and physics of materials, composites, and structures under extreme conditions, including high strain-rate, high pressure, and low and high temperatures
Julie Chen (UMass Lowell) – Composites and composites manufacturing, fibers and textile structures, experimental characterization of structural behavior
Christopher Hansen (UMass Lowell) – Composites manufacturing and experimental characterization of composites
Hongbing Lu (UT Dallas, FASME) – Long-term durability of wind turbines and towers under creep, fatigue and environmental conditions. Accelerated life testing under multiaxial stress states. Non-contact full-filed geometry and deformation measurements using digital image correlation.
Marianna Maiaru (UMass Lowell) – Micromechanical/multiscale modeling, failure analysis of fiber-reinforced composites, modeling cure kinetics
Dong Qian (UT Dallas) – Stress and fatigue analysis of wind energy systems. Modeling of nondestructive evaluation of flaws and micro-cracks. Nonlinear constitutive modeling of composites.
Emmanuelle Reynaud (UMass Lowell) – Experimental study and analytical modeling of materials structure-properties relations, mechanical, dynamic mechanical / rheological and thermomechanical materials analysis, indentation and nanoindentation testing, polymer composites and nanocomposites, inorganic glasses and hard coatings
Daniel Schmidt (UMass Lowell) – Materials chemistry, processing, analysis and structure-processing-properties relations, with specializations in thermosets, nanocomposites and nanoparticles, polymer-derived ceramics, thermal, barrier and fire properties measurements, and sustainable materials.
Scott Stapleton (UMass Lowell) – Solid mechanics, composite materials, textiles, multi-scale modeling, finite element modeling, adhesively bonded joints, sandwich structures
James Sherwood (UMass Lowell) – Finite element modeling, modeling of composite manufacturing processes, linking of the manufacturing process to the structural performance, high-speed impact

Control Systems and Optimization

Alain Bensoussan (UT Dallas) (FIEEE, FSIAM, French Academy of Science) - Risk and decision analysis in wind energy systems, stochastic control
Yulia Gel (UT Dallas) - Statistical foundation of data science; machine learning; high-dimensional data inference, analysis of spatio-temporal processes; time series of graphs
Yaoyu Li (UT Dallas) - Wind turbine control for energy capture and load reduction, controls and fault diagnosis for mechanical and electromechanical systems, dynamic modeling and controls of thermo-fluid systems
Mario Rotea (UT Dallas) (WindSTAR Site Director)(FIEEE) - Control systems analysis and design, structural control of wind turbines, control of wind storage systems, wind farm control
Tyler Summers (UT Dallas) - Control and optimization, power and energy networks, distributed robotics
Armin Zare (UT Dallas) – Control systems and optimization of fluid systems
Jie Zhang (UT Dallas) - Joined UT Dallas Fall 2015 from NREL Transmission and Grid Integration group. Forecasting, analytics and grid integration

Fluid Mechanics

William Anderson (UT Dallas) - Computational fluid dynamics, turbulent flows, environmental fluid dynamics, high-performance computing, boundary layer meteorology
Xianming (Simon) Dai (UT Dallas) - Superhydrophobic surfaces, wetting, nanofabrication, and thermal management
Kyle Jones (UT Dallas) - Wind Tunnel Engineer
Stefano Leonardi (UT Dallas) - Computational fluid mechanics, wind energy, super hydrophobic surfaces, oceanography
Giacomo Valerio Lungo (UT Dallas) - Wind LiDAR remote sensing, wind tunnel testing, wind turbine wake modeling and control, wind farm optimization
Yaqing Jin (UT Dallas) - Experimental fluid mechanics, Fluid-structure interactions, Turbulent flow
Eugene Niemi (UMass Lowell) – Aerodynamics of wind turbines, blade motion, response to gusts and tower support flow disturbances; wave effects on offshore wind turbine towers
David Willis (UMass Lowell) – Computational aerodynamics, multi-fidelity unsteady potential flow methods, fluid-structure interaction

Electrical, Computer and Software Engineering

Farokh B. Bastani (UT Dallas) (Co-director of Net-Centric Software & Systems I/UCRC) - Multi-tiered decentralized control systems, optimal real-time embedded control systems, proactive dependability assurance, automated multi-core control software synthesis
Bilal Akin (UT Dallas) – Power systems, renewable energy
Matthew Gardner (UT Dallas) - design, control, and diagnostics for magnetic gears, generators, and power electronic converters
Yuzhang Lin (UMass Lowell) – Smart grid modeling and monitoring; renewable energy forecasting and estimation; cyber-physical security and resiliency; data analysis and machine learning Smart grid modeling, monitoring, forecasting, cyber-physical security, data analysis
Yan Luo (UMass Lowell) – Computer engineering, heterogeneous computing, networking, deep learning, parallel and distributed processing, embedded systems network processors, low power processors, internet router and web server architectures, embedded systems, simulation and performance evaluation
Siavash Pakdelian (UMass Lowell) – Magnetic gears and gear-integrated machines, Analysis and design of electric machines, Advanced motion control, Marine and hydrokinetic energy systems, Biomechanical energy harvesting
Xingwei Wang (UMass Lowell) - Optical sensors, high temperature sensors, ultrafast pressure sensors, optical ultrasound imaging transducers

Structural Health Monitoring / Vibrations

Peter Avitabile (UMass Lowell) – Structural dynamic modeling using analytical and experimental methods, experimental modal analysis testing, test/analysis correlation and updating of models, finite element modeling
Robert Giles (UMass Lowell) – Radar signatures of field structures/vehicles and sub-millimeter wave inspection
Todd Griffith (UT Dallas) – Structural dynamics, aero-elastics, dynamics & control, structural health monitoring & prognostics management, design, experimental and analytical methods, reduced order modeling, model validation and uncertainty quantification
Murat Inalpolat (UMass Lowell) – Condition monitoring of gear trains and bearings, signal processing, and acoustics
Zhu Mao (UMass Lowell) – Structural health monitoring (SHM), non-destructive evaluation (NDE), Uncertainty quantification, time series modeling and signal processing, surrogate modeling of complex systems; machine learning and Bayesian inference regarding SHM decision-makings, cyber-physical systems, haptics and human machine interaction
Christopher Niezrecki (UMass Lowell) (WindSTAR Director) – Structural dynamics, non-destructive inspection, structural health monitoring, acoustics, smart structures and materials, active vibration control, blade testing
Tzu-Yang Yu (UMass Lowell) – Distant radar inspection, synthetic aperture radar imaging, electromagnetic wave-medium interaction, dielectric measurement and modeling of multiphase media, electrodynamic simulation, wavelet analysis

Additional Expertise

Babak Fahimi (UT Dallas) – Grid interface compatibility of wind generators, innovative electric machine technology for wind energy harvesting, stability enhancement and fault tolerant operation of wind generators
Hongbing Lu (UT Dallas) – Long-term durability of wind turbines and towers under creep, fatigue and environmental conditions. Accelerated life testing under multiaxial stress states. Non-contact full-filed geometry and deformation measurements using digital image correlation
Dong Qian (UT Dallas) – Stress and fatigue analysis of wind energy systems. Modeling of nondestructive evaluation of flaws and micro-cracks. Nonlinear constitutive modeling of composites
Raj Gondle (UMass Lowell) – Computer methods in geotechnical and civil engineering; experimental and computational geomechanics for energy and the environment; finite element modeling; multiphase fluid flow and geomechanics; coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes in geological media; reservoir and petroleum geomechanics
Pradeep Kurup (UMass Lowell) – Geotechnical engineering, multi-sensor data fusion, site characterization & monitoring, application of novel sensing technology to geotechnical & geo-environmental engineering; finite element modeling; artificial neural networks; calibration chamber testing; and soil-structure interaction
Samuel Paikowsky (UMass Lowell) – static and dynamic testing and analysis of deep structural foundations
Siavash Pakdelian (UMass Lowell) – Magnetic gears and gear-integrated machines, Analysis and design of electric machines, Advanced motion control, Marine and hydrokinetic energy systems, Biomechanical energy harvesting
David Turcotte (UMass Lowell) – Firm and industry level educational and skills needs assessment and resource identification, labor market trend analysis, and supply chain opportunity assessment, workforce development
Xingwei Wang (UMass Lowell) - Optical sensors, high temperature sensors, ultrafast pressure sensors, optical ultrasound imaging transducers