Prof. Suo Yang (https://cse.umn.edu/me/suo-yang) is the Richard & Barbara Nelson
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota –
Twin Cities (UMN). Dr. Yang’s research focuses on the modeling and simulation of
turbulent reacting and multiphase flows, including combustion, plasma,
particulate & gas-liquid flows, and hypersonics for propulsion & energy
applications. He has authored for over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and
referred conference papers, in which he received 4 Editor’s Pick and Featured
Article awards from Physics of Fluids and Combustion and Flame. Dr. Yang is an
awardee of the prestigious 2021 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA: only 32
awardees), 2022 ONR Young Investigator (YIP) Award (only 32 awardees), 2023
DARPA Director’s Fellowship Award (only 12 awardees), and 2024 AFOSR Young
Investigator (YIP) Award (only 48 awardees). His research has been supported by
NSF, ARL, ARO, DARPA, ONR, AFRL, AFOSR, ARPA-E, and ExxonMobil. Dr. Yang is a
Senior Member of AIAA and a committee member of 3 AIAA Technical Committees. He
also serves as an active reviewer for many top-tier journals for which he
received 4 Outstanding Reviewer Awards.
Prof. Yang’s Computational Reactive Flow & Energy Lab (CRFEL:
https://crfel.umn.edu):
Established in 2018, CRFEL currently has five primary research areas: (1)
plasma-assisted combustion and fuel/gas reforming toward zero emission, (2)
high-pressure liquid-fueled propulsion & power for high efficiency, (3)
hypersonic air-breathing propulsion and aerodynamics, (4) statistical modeling
of particles in combustion emission and nanomaterial synthesis, and (5) multi-
fidelity digital twins for propulsion & power control. Description of these
areas can be seen at https://crfel.umn.edu/research-areas. Also see Prof. Yang’s
invited talk about high-pressure phase change and plasma-assisted ignition at
https://youtu.be/IV_mzithk5c and another invited talk about soot modeling at
https://youtu.be/SYqQlS_5Tpc. Lab members of CRFEL have been super-successful:
two former postdocs are assistant professors at a top university, and students
received many prestigious fellowships & awards, including the 3M Fellowship
(only 3 awardees in the year), TACC Frontera Computational Science Fellowship
(only 4 awardees in the year), and two AIAA Martin Summerfield Propellants and
Combustion Graduate Awards (only 1 awardee per year). Students at CRFEL also
have plenty of internship opportunities in U.S. DoE National Labs (e.g.,
Lawrence Berkeley Lab, National Renewable Energy Lab, Sandia Lab, Argonne Lab,
etc.) and industries (e.g., Aramco, ExxonMobil, Google, Dow Chemical, 3M, etc.).
Requirements: a solid background in thermo-fluids & numerical methods and a
strong computer programming (e.g., Python, C++, especially object-oriented
programming) skill. Previous experience with high-performance parallel computing
(HPC) is desired but not required.
How to Apply: Please email Prof. Yang (suo-yang@umn.edu) with the following
materials:
• A detailed academic CV (including a list of publications if applicable);
• Transcripts (including your ranking);
• A statement that highlights the research interests and skills (see
Requirements);
• 1~3 publications/reports/slides/posters that you are most proud of;
• Contact details of 2~3 references.
Once encouraged by Prof. Yang, please submit your application at
https://cse.umn.edu/me/academics/graduate/prospective before the Ph.D. program
application deadline of December 15.
UMN is located in Minneapolis/St. Paul (i.e., Twin Cities), which is the 13th
largest metropolitan area in the United States with very convenient
transportation, life, and job opportunities. A lot of Fortune 500 companies and
17 headquarters of them (e.g., 3M, Target, Best Buy, General Mills, Polaris,
United Health, Xcel Energy) reside in the Twin Cities area. The Twin Cities area
has the 6th highest median household income among all metro areas in the nation.
UMN is ranked 8th in research among all public universities according to the
National Science Foundation (NSF) Survey of Research and Development. UMN
faculty and alumni have won 25 Nobel Prizes (30 if including researchers), which
is ranked 2nd among all public universities in the United States (right behind
UC-Berkeley). UMN also has the top 20 highest number of leading scholars among
all research institutes in the world, based on the PLOS citation data over the
past two decades. The Engineering program at UMN is ranked 4th in the United
States according to College Choice (2018). Minnesota Supercomputing Institute
(MSI) is one of the top 5 university-owned supercomputer centers in the nation.
The most recent Assessment of Doctoral Programs performed by the National
Research Council (NRC) ranked the UMN ME department well within the top 10% of
all ME doctoral programs in the United States, and by its “R-ranking,” as high
as 7th out of 163 ME doctoral programs in the country. This ranking is
rigorously determined, based upon the research output of our faculty and
graduate students. The department has been ranked 1st in heat transfer for more
than half century since the arrival of Prof. Ernst G. Eckert in Minnesota in
1951. Prof. Suhas V. Patankar (the CFD pioneer who invented the famous SIMPLE
algorithm) also worked at UMN ME until his retirement, and Prof. Yang has taken
the torch to teach the “Computational Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow” course
created by Prof. Patankar.
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