Our Team
ROHINI BALA CHANDRAN
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Rohini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She obtained her B.S. (2008) from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS-Pilani), India, an M.S (2010) and a Ph.D. (2015) from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, all in Mechanical Engineering. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory between 2015-2017 in the Energy Storage & Distributed Resources division.
Graduate Students
LUISA BARRERA |
MIKE MAYER |
BINGJIA LI |
ME PhD Student |
ME PhD Student |
ME PhD Student |
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Luisa obtained her Bachelor's degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2016. She is currently working on photoelectrochemical approaches for water splitting and wastewater treatment applications.
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Mike received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018 and worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for one year before coming to Michigan to begin his PhD. He is working on experimental techniques to study high temperature radiative heat transfer in systems with flowing particles
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Bingjia earned his Bachelor's degree in Building Environment & Energy Application Engineering from China University of Mining and Technology (2018). Currently he is working on modeling radiative heat transfer for particulate media.
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ZIJIE CHEN |
BRYAN KINZER
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ADITYA SUNDAR
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ME PhD Student |
ME PhD Student
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Materials Science & Eng. PhD Student
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Zijie obtained her Bachelor's degree in Building Environment & Energy Application Engineering from Shandong Jianzhu University in 2018. She is currently working on developing physics-based and data-drive models for radiative transport in particulate media.
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Bryan earned his Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tulsa in 2017 and then headed off to Lesotho for a year helping electrify rural villages. He is currently a PhD student working on modeling high temperature alloys for next generation power plants and working on modeling and measurements for thermochemical energy storage with salt hydrate materials
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Aditya earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) in India and Cornell University respectively. He is currently a PhD student working on modeling the thermodynamics and kinetics of corrosion due to oxidation and carburization for high-temperature materials in TREE Lab. He is co-advised by Prof. Liang Qi at UM in the Materials Science & Eng. department.
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RACHEL SILCOX
ME PhD Student
Rachel earned her Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Valparaiso University in 2019. She worked one year at a green hydrogen start-up company and as a statistics/environmental science teaching assistant at Pannasastra University of Cambodia - Siem Reap. She is currently a PhD student working on electrochemical methods for carbon dioxide concentration.
Undergraduate Students
THEO RULKO |
KATHERINE GIAMMALVO |
XINGZE DAI |
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Theo Rulko is a fourth-year undergraduate student in Aerospace Engineering, from Ottawa, Canada. His research interests include multi-phase flow dynamics and modelling the performance of advanced materials. Since 2020, he has served as president of MASA, the rocketry program at Michigan, where he has shaped the team's mission to launch the first student-built liquid-propellant rocket to space. At the TREE lab, he is working on experimental studies of gravity-driven particle flow, with applications to development of next-generation solar power plants.
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Kate Giammalvo is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Environmental Engineering. She is currently working on wastewater treatment applications of electrochemistry and studying life cycle analysis of carbon dioxide capture technologies.
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Xingze Dai is a third-year undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include prototype design, 3D printing, control theories and computer vision. He is currently working towards designs and prototypes to experimentally characterize heat and mass transfer in solar reactors for water splitting to produce hydrogen. He won the best poster presentation award in 2020 for his RISE project on electrochemical cell fabrication and concentration quantification using absorption spectroscopy.
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Alumni
- James Abraham (Fall 2020 -- Winter 2021), M.S. Student (ME 590 Project), Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan; presently at Bosch Thermotechnology, Michigan
- Erika Brower (Summer 2018 -- Summer 2020), Undergraduate Student, Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan; presently at ThermoLift, Livonia, Michigan
- Connor Boerman (Fall 2018 -- Fall 2019), Undergraduate Student, Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan; presently a B.S. student in ME at UM
- Aishwarya Krishnan (Winter, Summer and Fall 2019), M.S. Student (ME 590 Project), Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan; presently CFD Engineer at Romeo Power, Los Angeles, California
- Kory Nelson (Fall 2018 and Winter 2019), M.S. Student (ME 590 Project), Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan; presently at GE Renewable Energy in their Grid Solutions team, Seattle
- Fawaz Ali (Summer and Fall 2018), M.S. Student (ME 590 Project), Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan; presently doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at UM
- Yudong Chen (Fall 2018), M.S. Student (ME 590 Project), Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan
- Xingyu Zhou (Fall 2018), M.S. Student (ME 590 Project), Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan
- Chisang Park (Summer 2018), M.S. Student, Research Volunteer, University of Michigan; presently doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at UM
