Research

Modelling and simulation

My main experience lies in modelling and simulation of turbulent single- and multiphase flows at a continuum scale. I am interested in this at a fundamental level (e.g. LES and DNS of canonical flows such as turbulent channel flow) and studying applications of these flows (such as aerosol drug transport in patient airways).

Applications of CFD simulations

I like to study fluid dynamics in ‘real-world’ applications, to see how flow structures influence relevant quantities of interest such as drug deposition in lung airways (Int. J. Pharm. paper), or efficiency of industrial processes.

Data-driven modelling of multiphase flows

In this project, we seek to find closures for stochastic models of particle motion in turbulent flows (large eddy simulations) using data-driven modelling such as neural networks (Physics of Fluids paper). I am interested in extending this approach to different physical phenomena, with the goal of incorporating in real applications such as modelling drug inhalation.

Image analysis/quantitative imaging

I am interested in developing image analysis pipelines to extract metrics that describe the morphology of complex structures such as lung airways (figure below). Specifically, I am interested in how the structure of these organs correlates to function. For example, how does airway shape influence the deposition of aerosols in CFD simulations? How can we use machine learning to find new features that correlate well with organ function?

Previously, we have developed a Python package for statistical shape and appearance modelling (pyssam), which can be used to analyse correlation of complex shapes over a population.