People

Alban Sauret is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland. He completed his undergraduate and graduate education in France, conducted postdoctoral research at Princeton University, and held a CNRS research position near Paris before joining UCSB in 2018 and UMD in 2023.

Originally from the south of France, Alban enjoys trail running and pretending he doesn't have a French accent.

Sreeram Rajesh is a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He completed his undergraduate degree in Manufacturing Engineering at BITS Pilani, India, and worked for a year at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, modeling erosion-based polishing mechanisms. His current research investigates the complex interactions between particles and non-Newtonian fluids.

Sreeram was born and raised in Kerala, India. He enjoys reading, watching soccer, biking, cooking, and is an avid fan of rock music.

Ram Sudhir Sharma is a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He earned his BA and MA in Physics, with a minor in Philosophy, from Clark University. During his Master’s, he worked in Prof. Arshad Kudrolli’s lab on granular suspensions and particle dissolution. His current research explores the dynamics of cohesive granular materials and the interplay between grain-scale forces and flow behavior.

Ram grew up in Pune, India. He enjoys reading philosophy, long walks, cooking, and playing chess. He's also fascinated by the intersection of physics and metaphysics.

Anant Kumar Yadav is a visiting PhD student from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, where he is co-advised by Profs. Saptarshi Basu and Satish Ramakrishnan. His research at UMD focuses on cohesive grains under shear, with an emphasis on modeling and high-speed imaging of jet breakup and consolidation in powders.

Anant enjoys playing badminton and reading detective novels. He is particularly interested in interdisciplinary work that bridges physics, engineering, and real-world applications.

Valentin Richard is a visiting graduate student from ESPCI Paris. He is working on cohesive granular collapses and erosion mechanisms using high-speed experiments and flow visualization techniques. His research aims to better understand the physical processes behind landslides and cohesive sediment transport.

Valentin is from France and enjoys photography, running, and jazz music. He is enthusiastic about applying fundamental physics to environmental problems.

Jules Roth is a visiting graduate student from École Polytechnique in France. At UMD, he is studying the behavior of wet granular materials and the conditions under which cohesive particles begin to erode under fluid shear. His experiments aim to characterize the onset of motion and fragmentation in particle beds.

Jules is passionate about hiking and music. He often explores the Maryland countryside on weekends and enjoys composing piano pieces in his spare time.

Raaghav Thirumaligai (they/them) is an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering. They are fascinated with research and are interested in fluid mechanics as a possible focus. Currently, they are working on a system to characterize cohesion in granular materials and have worked on various projects, including the clogging of fiber suspensions.

Raaghav has lived in California, specifically the Bay Area for most of their life. They spend their free time waking up at unreasonable hours to watch Formula 1 and cycle.

Alexis Lin is an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering. She hopes to learn more about fluid mechanics and is currently exploring crater formations on a cohesive granular surface.

Alexis is from the Bay Area and, in her free time, she enjoys cooking and baking new recipes and gathering an array of art skills.

Thanvi Anand is an undergraduate student at UCSB, studying mechanical engineering. She is fascinated in understanding and researching clogging and the fluid dynamics behind this topic.

Thanvi is from the Bay Area, and enjoys pulling out her sketchbook and drawing whenever she gets the chance, while sipping a cup of hot chai.

Marc Noujeim is an undergraduate student studying Mechanical Engineering. He is interested in learning more about fluid mechanics and the dynamics of granular collapses. His current research focuses on experiments quantifying the Janssen effect.

Marc grew up in the Bay Area, and in his free time he enjoys watching sports, going on walks, biking, and traveling.

Kevin Zhao has an undergraduate degree in physics from UCSB. His research interests mainly lie in soft and living matter physics, such as fluid dynamics. He is also exploring more interdisciplinary topics, such as seismology, in Geophysics.

Kevin was born in Illinois but spent most of his life in Southern China. He loves traveling, watching movies, and just a little badminton and tennis.

Thomas Yu is an undergraduate student at UCSB, studying mechanical engineering. He is interested in understanding solid and fluid mechanics, including research on fluidization and drying of wet granular beds.

Thomas is from the Bay Area. Outside of his academic interests, he enjoys playing badminton, eating good food, and whistling.

Camron Hosseini is an undergraduate in mechanical engineering at UCSB. His current research involves measuring hydraulic pressure losses across drip emitters.

Camron is from Sacramento and spends most of his free time assisting UCSB’s Formula SAE team, playing the guitar and drums, and spending time outdoors.

Ariana Gomez is an undergraduate student in geophysics at UCSB. Her research focuses on the bulk behavior of cohesive and noncohesive granular materials to better understand their properties and extend this study to large-scale models and environmental phenomena such as landslides, avalanches, and other geologic processes.

Ariana is from Peru and grew up in the Bay Area. She enjoys watching movies, going on road trips, and sleeping late.

Benny Xie is a third-year undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering at UCSB. He is interested in fluid mechanics and is currently studying how mass flow rate of a granular materials depends on the angular velocity of a container.

Benny is from Southern California. In his free time, he enjoys reading science-fiction novels, cooking, and photography.

Virgile Thiévenaz was a postdoctoral scholar between 2020 and 2022. His PhD work focused on the interaction between capillary flow and freezing. At UCSB, he developed projects in capillary flow of suspensions and atomization of liquids. He is now a CNRS Researcher at ESPCI, France.

Hadis Matinpour was a postdoctoral scholar from 2019 to 2021. She did her graduate studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her work focused on understanding the initiation mechanism of mudflow generation on hillslopes following a heavy rainstorm after a wildfire.

Brian Dincau was a graduate student from 2018 to 2022. He obtained his undergraduate degree from UC Davis and his Master's degree from WSU. His research focused on investigating fundamental mechanisms involved in clog formation, a problem that spans many scales and applications. He is now a lab manager at CNSI UCSB.

Haolin He was a BS/MS student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2022. His project focused on designing and building an apparatus to test the swimming efficiency of weaving hydrofoils with different surface roughness, geometry of the foil and swimming environment.

Deok-Hoon Jeong was a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering from 2019 to 2024. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Rochester. At UCSB, his research was centered on suspension flow in various constrictions, encompassing soft constrictions like liquid-air interfaces to rigid ones such as slits and nozzles, addressing potential clogging issues.

Justin Maddox was an M.S. student who graduated in Winter 2025. Justin came from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and worked in our group on problems involving the flow and transport of fiber suspensions.

Grace Harvill was an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering working in our group during the academic year 2023–2024. Her research involved the drying of powders.

Ariel Nunez Del Prado was an undergraduate student working in our group within the EUREKA program in summer 2024. In our group, he got his first research experience investigating the behavior of granular materials, focusing on the mechanics behind their piling and spreading dynamics.

Sacha Escudier was an undergraduate student working in the M&M Flow Lab on different clogging projects from 2022 to 2024. After that, he went for his PhD at Princeton University.

Mark Cullen was an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering working with us from 2023 to 2024. He studied the role of cohesion on granular streams and their consequent breakup.

Cole Giusto was an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering interested in many fields of engineering, with an emphasis on fluid dynamics and controls. In the M&M Flow Lab, he worked on droplet pinch-off with viscoelastic fiber suspensions in 2023–2024.

Riley Tinianov was an undergraduate student studying Mechanical Engineering and working with us from Winter 2023 to Winter 2024. He explored capillary flows of particulate suspensions.

Anuj Acharya was a chemical engineering student working in our group from Fall 2023 to Winter 2024. He conducted research to characterize the cohesion due to capillary liquid bridges between particles.

Juwon Park was an undergraduate student at UCSB, studying mechanical engineering. In our group, he worked on exploring the collapse of granular columns as a means to study cliff collapse.

Jackie Park came from the Chemical Engineering department and worked with us in Fall 2023 and Winter 2024. She was interested in exploring how the chemical properties of different materials affect the drying process.

Jackie Li was a 3rd-year Mechanical Engineering undergraduate student who worked in our group in 2023 on developing experimental setups to study the drying of wet powder using mechanical agitation and air flows.

Yihsuan (Danny) Lai was a 4th-year undergraduate student in the Chemical Engineering Department who worked with us in 2023. He developed shear cell designs to better measure the properties of cohesive granular material.

Langqi (Michael) Xing was an undergraduate student majoring in Chemical Engineering at UCSB working in our group between 2020 and 2022. He worked on capillary flow of suspensions and cohesive grains and is now a PhD student at Northeastern University.

Michael Ka Ho Lee was an undergraduate student at UCSB pursuing a BS in Mechanical Engineering. He worked in the M&M Flow Lab in 2021 focusing on dip-coating with particulate suspensions.

Connor Tang was an undergraduate student pursuing Mechanical Engineering at UCSB and working in our group in 2021–2022. His research focused on modeling the fundamental mechanisms involved in clog formation and investigating the relationship between pulsating flow and clogging events.

Mingze Gong was an undergraduate student in our lab from 2019 to 2021. His research focused on the flow behaviors of cohesion-controlled granular material, including the collapse of granular columns and erosion of cohesive beds by turbulent jets. He subsequently pursued an MS at UCLA.

Kian Ahmadzadeh-Heravi was a second-year undergraduate student at UCSB in Mechanical Engineering, working in our group in 2020–2021. He investigated how cohesive effects modify the penetration depth of低-velocity projectiles.

Freda Lababidi was a fourth-year undergraduate student in Chemical Engineering who worked in the group in 2020–2021. Her research explored how anisotropic particles are entrained on a film coating a substrate.

Sivar Azadi was an undergraduate student in the Physics department and worked in the M&M Flow Lab from 2019 to 2020. His research focused on the erosion of granular materials by vortices and turbulent flow.

Hanming Li was an undergraduate student in Chemical Engineering and in our group from 2019 to 2020. His research focused on the effect of particle size on the rising velocity of air bubbles in suspensions.

Joanne Steiner was a visiting PhD student from FAST (Paris-Saclay University, France) in 2023. Her doctoral work examined erosion of granular beds driven by an oscillating disk. At UCSB she extended this to study erosion dynamics in cohesive granular beds.

Ben McMillan was a visiting PhD student from the University of Cambridge (UK) between October and December 2022. His PhD explored avalanching granular materials; at UCSB he applied photoelasticity to probe clogging in two-dimensional silos.

Simon Brient was a visiting PhD student in 2022 from IJLRDA (Sorbonne Université, Paris, France). His thesis studied temperature effects on flowing water films; during his stay at UCSB he investigated the impact of water droplets on thin flowing films.

Wladimir Sarlin was a visiting PhD student from FAST (Paris-Saclay University, France) in 2022. His doctoral research centered on impulse waves generated by granular collapse into water. At UCSB he focused on the dynamics of cohesive granular materials.

Adrien Gans was a visiting PhD student from IUSTI (Marseille, France) in 2019. His PhD examined the flowability of powders and cohesive grains; at UCSB he investigated the collapse behavior of cohesive granular columns.

Théophile Meiller was a visiting student from ESPCI Paris-PSL (France) in 2024. In the M&M Flow Lab he investigated how drops of complex fluids impact and erode granular surfaces.

Katy Tegou was a second-year graduate student at ESPCI Paris-PSL visiting the group in 2024. Building on experience at NTT Phi Lab, she explored erosion of cohesive grains by turbulent flows.

Guillaume Bonnesson was a visiting MS student from ESPCI Paris-PSL. At UCSB he examined flow instabilities in millifluidic channels.

Vincent Poitier was a visiting student from Sorbonne Université co-advised with Frédéric Gibou in 2024, modeling precipitation and dissolution in porous media.

Matthis Vaudable visited from CentraleSupélec Paris-Saclay in 2023. He studied cohesive granular collapses on inclined planes, extending earlier tsunami-related work from FAST Laboratory.

Rémi Thomas was an MS physics student from ENS Lyon who joined the lab in 2023 to explore suspension flows in millifluidic systems.

Raphaël Bouguemari interned with the group in 2023 while an MS student at ENS Paris-Saclay, investigating rheology and flow of muddy suspensions.

Nathan Vani visited in 2021-2022 from ENS Paris-Saclay to study clogging of suspensions in confined geometries; he is now pursuing a PhD at PMMH ESPCI.

Sébastien Kuchly was a visiting MS student from ESPCI Paris in 2022, focusing on transport and clogging of fiber suspensions.

Baptiste Jouron came from École Polytechnique (France) in 2022; co-advised with F. Gibou, he modeled reactive flows in porous media.

Jules Tampier visited in 2022 from Institut de Physique du Globe and ENS de Lyon, studying erosion of granular beds by impacting droplets.

Sumukh Peddada was a visiting undergraduate from BITS Pilani (India) in 2021 who explored bubble dynamics in viscoelastic fluids; he later pursued an MS at the University of Washington.

Anezka Kvasnickova visited from ESPCI Paris in 2020 after undergraduate studies in Prague; she performed numerical simulations of thin-film flows.

Guillaume Grosjean was a remote visiting student from Polytech Montpellier in 2020, modeling flow through porous aggregates.

Anthony Rey-Pommier visited from ENS Paris-Saclay in 2019, studying how confinement affects porous sphere flows; he later pursued environmental economics.

Jean-Baptiste Boutin was a visiting MS student from ESPCI (France) in 2019, working on suspension deposition inside capillary tubes before moving to Mines Paristech for further studies.