Babak Anasori

Babak formally joined Purdue in September 2023 as Reilly Rising Star Associate Professor of Materials and Mechanical Engineering, after previously serving at IUPUI. In Anasori's lab, he designs two-dimensional (2D) transition metal carbides and nitrides called MXenes, using them for a variety of applications, including materials for extreme environments, hypersonic materials, lighter and stronger composites, energy generation, electromagnetic interference shielding, and carbon capture and utilization. He maintains labs in both West Lafayette and Indianapolis.

Eduardo Barocio Vaca

Eduardo joined the School of Mechanical Engineering as Assistant Professor in February 2024. Eduardo comes to us from the Composites Manufacturing & Simulation Center, where he was Assistant Director of Additive Manufacturing. He got his Ph.D. from Purdue in Materials Engineering in 2018, studying under Byron Pipes.

Jie Cai

Jie joined us in August 2024 as Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, after seven years at Oklahoma. His research interests are HVAC and smart buildings; grid-interactive building controls; and modeling and control of thermal/energy systems. Jie got his Ph.D. from Purdue in 2015, studying at Herrick Labs.
 

Xiaoping Du

Xiaoping joined Purdue University in Indianapolis as Professor of Mechanical Engineering in July 2024, coming over from IUPUI. His research Interests include design optimization; probabilistic and statistical methods; reliability-based and robust design; and uncertainty quantification for machine learning.

Carlos Larriba-Andaluz

Carlos joined Purdue University in Indianapolis as Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering in July 2024, coming over from IUPUI. Carlos developed the Ion Mobility Spectrometry Suite (IMoS), a set of parallelized tools that can be used to infer the collision cross section and mobilities of all-atom models. He uses mass spectrometry to study renewable energy, catalysts, aerosol pollution, electrical propulsion, polymer characterization, protein and biomolecule characterization, and more.

Ashwin Ramachandran

Ashwin will join Purdue as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in January 2025. He comes from postdoctorate research at Princeton, studying mechanosensing in bacteria. Before that, his Ph.D. at Stanford involved developing electrokinetic microfluidic devices for rapid and automated clinical diagnostics of diseases.

Li Zhan

Starting in January 2025, Li will have a 75/25 appointment as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, respectively. His research develops engineering tools for biomedical applications, specifically focusing on manufacturing living biosystems and engineering biomedical devices for a broad range of applications including biopreservation, cancer research, point-of-care diagnostics and beyond. He got his Ph.D from the University of Minnesota, and then did postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School.

Professors of Engineering Practice

Christopher Finch

Chris joined Purdue University in Indianapolis as Professor of Engineering Practice in February 2024, after teaching Motorsports Engineering at IUPUI for more than ten years. His research interests are vehicle engineering, dynamics, and design.

Eric Holloway

Eric was appointed to the School of Mechanical Engineering as Professor of Engineering Practice in February 2024. Eric is no stranger to Purdue, having served for more than a decade as Senior Director of Industry Research in the College of Engineering, and also courtesy faculty both in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Education.

Daniel Williams

Dan joined Purdue University as Professor of Engineering Practice in January 2024. He comes to us after 37 years at ZF, where his expertise was vehicle chassis control systems, vehicle dynamics, and autonomous vehicles.

Indianapolis Courtesy Faculty

In addition to these full-time appointments, many IUPUI faculty are now professors for Purdue University in Indianapolis, with 15 of them having a courtesy appointment in Mechanical Engineering.

Sohel Anwar

Sohel is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering whose research interests include perception and control for autonomous vehicles; novel sensor development and data fusion; advanced diagnostics and management of large capacity batteries; biomechanical device design and control; wind turbine modeling and controls; and electrified powertrains / sustainable mobility systems.

Jie Chen

Jie is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering whose research interests include dental biomechanics; instrumentation design; systems engineering; and energy efficiency.

Hamid Dalir

Hamid is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His lab explores composite materials design and manufacturing; sustainable and recyclable-by-design polymers and composites; polymer processing and characterization; composites recycling; hybrid manufacturing systems; and damage mechanics.

Hazim El Mounayri

Hazim is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include virtual manufacturing; nanomanufacturing; machining process modeling, simulation and optimization; integrated CAD/CAE/CAM based product development; enhancement of CAD/CAM technology; automation of CNC production; and PLM and design of renewable energy and biomedical systems.

 

Alan Jones

Alan is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include multifunctional materials; self-healing polymers; fracture and fatigue; elastomers; degradation of materials; electrolyte membranes; and experimental mechanics.

Razi Nalim

Razi is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include innovative powerplants; wave rotors; combustion and turbulence modeling; ignition processes; pollution control; and unsteady biofluid flow.

Hosop Shin

Hosop is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. In his lab, he researches electrochemistry, mechanics, interfacial chemistry, and kinetics in energy storage systems; advanced synthesis, processing, and characterization techniques for energy storage materials; atomistic-scale modeling of chemical and mechanical properties in energy storage materials; and multi-scale and multi-physics based modeling of Li-ion batteries and fuel cells.

Andres Tovar

Andres is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include bioengineering; energy engineering; automotive engineering; crashworthiness; and blast mitigation.

Diane Wagner

Diane is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include orthopaedic biomechanics; soft tissue mechanics; computational biomechanics; tissue engineering and regenerative medicine; mechanobiology; stem cell differentiation; and musculoskeletal biology and repair.

Xiaoliang Wei

Xiaoliang is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. In his lab, he researches energy materials and electrochemical systems; redox flow batteries; multivalent batteries; 2D layered materials; supercapacitors; and graphene.

Jian Xie

Jian is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include fuel cells; advanced batteries; nano-materials; hydrogen storage; clean-coal technology; carbon dioxide treatment; and artificial muscle.

Shengfeng Yang

Shengfeng is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. In his lab, he studies semiconductors and microelectronics; machine learning and artificial intelligence; computational modeling and simulation; interfaces and defects in materials; and materials for sustainable energy.

Huidan (Whitney) Yu

Whitney is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include image-based computational and experimental fluid dynamics for porous-media and biomedical flows; translational research integrating high-performance CFD, image-based and physics-informed machine-learning, and uncertainty quantification to address unmet clinical needs; GPU-parallelized lattice Boltzmann method for DNS and LES of turbulence; and micro-bubble coalescence and detachment in microfluidics.

Jing Zhang

Jing is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include additive manufacturing/3D printing; renewable energy (thermal barrier coating, lithium ion battery, hydrogen transport membrane, solid oxide fuel cell); multi-scale modeling (finite element method, discrete element method, molecular dynamics, ab initio method); coupled phenomena (thermal and electrical properties, mass transport), and their applications to processing (additive manufacturing, powder metallurgy, compaction and sintering, metal forming); and ceramic materials for biomedical and power generation applications.

Likun Zhu

Jing is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose research interests include microelectromechanical systems (MEMS); micro and nanofluidic systems; micro and nano fabrication; micro and nano computed tomography; fuel cells; and battery modeling and simulation.