People
Faculty
My name is Yashar Mehmani and I am an assistant professor in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering (EME) at the Pennsylvania State University. I am also a co-funded faculty in the Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE). I did my undergraduate at Sharif University of Technology, Iran, followed by a PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. I was then a postdoctoral fellow and later a research associate at the Energy Resources Engineering Department at Stanford University. Our group's research is broadly related to porous media flow and mechanics with a special focus on computing and scale translation. We are interested in how microscale physics affect macroscopic observations and how predictive tools based on such knowledge can be built. Applications that motivate our research relate to sustainability aspects of subsurface energy production, groundwater remediation, and renewables.
Postdoctoral Scholars
Kangan Li joined our group as a postdoctoral scholar. He received his PhD in computational mechanics from Duke University in December 2021. His past research focused on an embedded finite element technique called the shifted interface method for simulating problems with complex geometries. Examples include Darcy flow, fluid dynamics, and fracture mechanics. In 2014, he received his BSc in mechanical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His current research focuses on multiscale methods for fracture mechanics of porous materials. He maintains an interest in embedded finite element methods for solid and fluid mechanics.
Graduate Students
Nicolás Bueno is a co-advised PhD student with Prof. Luis F. Ayala. Before joining Penn State, he completed a BSc and later a MSc from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, both in petroleum engineering. His past research has focused on the field-scale modeling of enhanced chemical and thermal recovery methods for difficult-to-produce hydrocarbons. His current research is aimed at developing lattice Boltzmann methods for understanding the fluid dynamics of partially miscible systems, with applications to geologic CO2 storage and unconventional resources.
Sabit Mahmood Khan joined our group as a PhD student in the Spring of 2022. He completed his BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and MSc in Thermal Power and Fluid Engineering from the University of Manchester. Before joining Penn State, he worked as a Lecturer at the department of Mechanical Engineering in the Military Institute of Science and Technology, Bangladesh. His current research focuses primarily on the multiscale modeling of crack nucleation and growth in porous materials. Applications that motivate his research are geologic CO2 storage, geothermal energy, and energy storage and conversion devices such as batteries and fuel cells.
