Denis Aslangil (PI)
Denis is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. His research interests traverse theory, modeling, and high-fidelity simulations of complex subsonic to hypersonic flows, and high-performance computing. His research group study compressible turbulent mixing, hydrodynamic instabilities, and fluid-solid-shock interactions. He teaches MEGN 451 Aerodynamics and MEGN 553 Computational Fluid Dynamics courses. In his free time, he enjoys playing chess, flying, and cooking.
Current Graduate Students
Ahmet Furkan Kula
Ahmet is a first-year Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering, Colorado School of Mines. His research interests include Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) of turbulent flows, parallel coding and computing, and high-order schemes for CFD. He has Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering and Physics from Bogazici University. His hobbies are running, hiking, and reading books on different physics topics.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmet-furkan-kula-80525b15a/
Orkun Mert Ustun
Orkun is a first-year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering, Colorado School of Mines. He received his Bachelor's Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University in Spring 2023. He studies compressible Rayleigh-Taylor Instability. His hobbies are playing soccer, watching basketball, and playing guitar.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orkun-ustun/
Paul Mekhedjian
Paul completed his degrees in physics, having focused on nonlinear fluid dynamics in his undergraduate research and astrophysical, high-energy-density (HED) phenomena in his graduate work prior to joining the University of Alabama as a Ph.D. student in 2022. Currently, with Dr. Aslangil's group, he is researching turbulence in plasma and multi-species flows. Outside of his day job and academia, he enjoys hiking and time with family.
Nicholas Pak
Nicholas is a highly motivated student on track to graduate with his BSME, MBA, and MSAEM from The University of Alabama. He mostly spends his time on academics as he is a part of many professional societies and clubs such as ASME, AIAA, AICHE, and Stem Path to MBA Ambassadors. In his free time, he plays guitar and practices tricking. He works on multi-fluid turbulent mixing under time-varying forces.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholaspak/
Hutson Staggs
Hutson received his undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Fall 2022. He is now a graduate student pursuing an MS degree in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Alabama and studies compressible multi-species mixing. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and climbing with his wife and playing music.
Current Undergraduate Students
Aidan Gesch
Aidan is an Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics major on track to earn his BS and MS from the University of Alabama in 2026 and 2027, respectively. He is currently studying in Prague, Czechia through a USAC study abroad program. He is also part of the Randall Research Scholars Program, as well as AIAA, Sigma Gamma Tau, and the UASpace BAMA-2 Mission Team. In his free time, Aidan enjoys attending UA sporting events and learning new coding techniques.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidan-gesch/
Sam Wood
Sam is a computer science and mathematics double major who is currently a sophomore at UA. His academic interests include machine learning, high-performance computing, and procedural generation. He is currently a co-op at Mercedes-Benz and is part of the Putnam Math Team on campus. In his free time, he enjoys playing the piano, working out, and reading.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-wood-471a91228/
Remembrance
Tyler Prine
Tyler was an Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering (double major) senior student and was an MS student in the Aerospace Engineering Master's Program. For his master's thesis work, he was studying compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability with large density variations. He attended 3 international conferences and published 1 conference paper in a little over a year. He will always be missed by his colleagues. Dr. Aslangil dedicates this work to the memory of Tyler Prine, who passed away just after the submission of the final version of this manuscript
Graduate Alumni
Orkun Mert Ustun MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Summer 2024
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orkun-ustun/
Ahmet Furkan Kula MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Summer 2024
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmet-furkan-kula-80525b15a/
Laurin Thuney MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Fall 2024
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurin-thuney-pe-a67aa97b/
Ronald Lee MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Fall 2023
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-lee-jr/
Brian Goldstein MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Fall 2022
Undergraduate Alumni
Elise Theriot BS in Aerospace Engineering in Spring 2025
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisetheriot
Ian Harlow BS in Mechanical Engineering in Summer 2023
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iansharlow/
Darren (DJ) Ferrier BS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Spring 2023
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenferrierjr/
Benjamin Robertson BS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Spring 2022
NEWS
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Denis Aslangil, & Man Long Wong publish an article titled "Investigation of strong isothermal stratification effects on multi-mode compressible Rayleigh–Taylor instability" in Physics of Fluids (07/2023).
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Denis Aslangil, Andrew Lawrie, & Arindam Banerjee publish an article titled "Effects of variable deceleration periods on Rayleigh-Taylor instability with acceleration reversals" in PhysRevE (06/2022).
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Denis Aslangil and Man Long Wong, "Study of iso-thermal stratification strength on 2D multi-mode compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability", to be presented at AIAA SciTech 2022 (01/2022).
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Xingyu Su, Robin Walters, Denis Aslangil, Rose Yu, publish a conference article titled "Forecasting variable-density 3D turbulent flow", at Simulation with Deep Learning (SimDL) International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) Workshop, 2021.
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Juan Saenz, Denis Aslangil, & Daniel Livescu publish an article titled "Filtering, averaging, and scale dependency in homogeneous variable-density turbulence" in the Physics of Fluids (2/2021). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0040337
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Denis Aslangil (PI) & Man Long Wong, "Compressibility effects in two-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor Instability", US NSF - XSEDE Startup allocation (12/2020).
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Denis Aslangil, Daniel Livescu & Arindam Banerjee, publish a conference paper titled "Acceleration reversal effects on buoyancy-driven variable-density turbulence", Proceedings of 22nd Australasian Fluid Mechanics Conference AFMC2020, (12/2020). https://doi.org/10.14264/a55b8c2
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Denis Aslangil, Zachary Farley, Andrew Lawrie, & Arindam Banerjee publish an article titled "Rayleigh–Taylor Instability With Varying Periods of Zero Acceleration" in the Journal of Fluid Engineerings (05/2020). https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4048348
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Denis Aslangil, Daniel Livescu & Arindam Banerjee publish an article titled "Effects of Atwood and Reynolds numbers on the evolution of buoyancy-driven homogeneous variable-density turbulence" in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (05/2020). https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2020.268
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Selected for participating in the Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing, ATPESC 2020 in Chicago IL, which is a part of the Exascale Computing Project, and a collaborative effort of the DOE Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
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Denis Aslangil, Daniel Livescu & Arindam Banerjee publish an article titled "Variable-density buoyancy-driven turbulence with asymmetric initial density distribution" in the journal Physica D (03/2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physd.2020.132444
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Denis Aslangil attends NSF Workshop on Exuberance of Machine Learning in Transport Phenomena in Dallas, Texas (02/2020).
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Denis Aslangil attends the 3rd Physics Informed Machine Learning Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico (01/2020).
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Denis Aslangil attends ASME IMECE 2019 in Salt Lake City, Utah (11/2019).