Group

Alec Linot

Assistant Professor, UMass-Amherst, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2025 – Present

Postdoc, UCLA, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, 2025
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin - Madison, Chemical and Biological Engineering, 2023
B.S., Kansas State University, Chemical Engineering, 2017

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UMass-Amherst. My group focuses on using computation and theory to model, control, and analyze a variety of fluid flows. I am particularly interested in systems that exhibit sustained chaotic dynamics, and the transition mechanisms to chaos. Wall-bounded Newtonian turbulence is a canonical example of a chaotic fluid system, but many other fluid systems can exhibit chaotic behavior, such as bacteria aggregation, viscoelastic flows, and Rayleigh–Bénard convection.

Yawei Gao

Postdoctoral Researcher, UMass-Amherst, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2026 - Present

Post. Doc., Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 2026
Ph.D., Penn State University, Mechanical Engineering, 2022
M.S. University of Stuttgart, Vehicle and Engine Engineering, 2017
B.Eng., Tongji University, Vehicle Engineering, 2013

I am Yawei Gao, a researcher specializing in multiscale modeling - spanning nanoscale quantum mechanics and all-atom molecular dynamics, mesoscale coarse-grained MD and phase-field methods, and continuum-scale computational fluid dynamics. I apply this unified modeling framework to advance modern materials manufacturing. By integrating deep learning alongside traditional physics-based approaches, I aim to uncover complex cross-scale relationships that remain inaccessible through physics-based methods alone.

Shivam Niphade

PhD Student, UMass-Amherst, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2025 - Present

B.Chem., Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, 2025

Shivam is a PhD student from India. During his bachelor’s at ICT Mumbai, he worked on waste-salt valorisation for a dye manufacturing industry, where he developed and optimized a process to recover ultrapure salts and evaluated its technical and economic feasibility. He also interned at Henkel ASC in Pune, focusing on improving the storage stability of PVC Plastisol used in automotive underbody coatings. Currently, his research centers on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), where he develops numerical and Machine Learning based methods to model, analyze, and control fluid flows and chaotic dynamical systems. Outside of academics, he enjoys traveling, observing nature, and cycling.

Rida Ilahi

M.S. Student, UMass-Amherst, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2026 - Present

B.S., Mount Holyoke College, Double major in Physics and Mathematics, 2026

My research interests span experimental and computational fluid dynamics, with a focus on understanding and characterizing complex fluid flows. As an undergraduate, I developed an algorithm based on topological techniques, specifically braid theory, to identify and characterize coherent sets of trajectories in a range of model flows. I also studied the motility of microswimmers in microfluidic systems, using three-dimensional microscopy to reconstruct and analyze their full 3D dynamics. Currently, I am working on topology optimization of turbulent flows, focusing on employing automatic differentiation and neural networks to parameterize the design field and efficiently optimize flow configurations.