People

Alban Sauret

Associate Professor

Alban Sauret is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He did his undergraduate and graduate studies in France, followed by a postdoctoral training at Princeton University. After a few years working as a CNRS researcher in a joint CNRS/Saint-Gobain laboratory near Paris (France), he was a assistant, then associate professor at UC Santa Barbara between 2018 and 2024. In 2025, he join the department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Alban grew up in the south of France and is still trying to (unsuccessfully) hide his French accent. In his spare time, he enjoys trail running in the Santa Barbara area.

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Jooyeon Park

Postdoctoral Researcher

Jooyeon Park is a postdoctoral researcher in Mechanical Engineering at the UMD. She received her doctoral degree from Seoul National University, South Korea (supervised by Prof. Hyungmin Park) in August 2023. Her Ph.D. work focused on particle-laden flows and particle–mist interactions. After completing her Ph.D. and before joining UMD, she worked at Samsung Electronics for two years in semiconductor device R&D. At UMD, she is currently studying drop impact on grains and soft matter.
Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Jooyeon enjoys running and cooking with her husband in her free time.

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John Ruck

Postdoctoral Researcher

John Ruck is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland. He studied both Geosciences and Business at Franklin & Marshall College, researching periglacial processes and fluvial geomorphology with Dorothy Merritts. John received his PhD in Earth & Environmental Science from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2025, advised by Douglas Jerolmack in the PennSED (Soft Earth Dynamics) Group. His PhD work relied on a combination of robotics and geomorphology to study the rheology of granular materials.
Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, John spends his free time fly fishing, biking, and following the Baltimore Ravens.

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Sreeram Rajesh

PhD Student

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.

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Ram Sharma

PhD Student

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.

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Anant Kumar Yadav

PhD Student

Anant Kumar Yadav is a first-year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at University of Maryland, College Park. He received his B.S. from Tribhuvan University (Pulchowk Campus, Nepal) in 2020 and completed his M.S. at the Indian Institute of Technology Bhilai in 2022. Before joining UMD, he worked as a research analyst in India. At UMD he is working on clogging in various fluidic systems.
Originally from the Mithila region of Nepal, Anant enjoys cooking, movies, running, and swimming in his free time.

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Owen Tu

PhD Student

Owen Tu is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. He earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester in 2025. His research focuses on liquid drop impact and embedded 3D printing.
Originally from Beijing, China, Owen enjoys playing soccer, camping, bowling, and performing magic in his free time.

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Marc Noujeim

Undergraduate Student

Marc is an undergraduate in mechanical engineering. He is curious about fluid mechanics and granular collapse. His current work measures the Janssen effect in silos.

Ariana Gomez

Undergraduate Student

Ariana is an undergraduate in geophysics. She studies the bulk behavior of cohesive and noncohesive grains. She links lab results to large‑scale models of landslides, avalanches, and other geologic flows.

Benny Xie

Undergraduate Student

Benny is a third‑year student in mechanical engineering. He investigates how the mass flow rate of granular material varies with a container’s angular velocity.

Virgile Thievenaz

Postdoctoral Researcher

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

Postdoctoral Researcher

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. She is now an Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University.

Brian Dincau

PhD Student

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. He is now a lab manager at CNSI UCSB.

Deok-Hoon Jeong

PhD Student

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 capillary flows. He is now an Engineer at Samsung SDI in South Korea.

Justin Maddox

MS Student

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. He is now an Engineeer at Anderson Systems.

Haolin He

BS/MS Student

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. He is now an Engineer at Lockheed Martin.

Valentin Richard

Visiting MS Student

Valentin is a visiting MS student from ENS Paris‑Saclay. At UMD, he studies how turbulent flows can reduce clogging in drip irrigation systems.

Jules Roth

Visiting MS Student

Jules is a graduate student at ESPCI Paris‑PSL visiting the lab. He works on the erosion of cohesive grains by turbulent flows.

Kevin Zhao

Undergraduate Researcher

Kevin studies soft and living matter physics, with a focus on fluid dynamics. He also explores seismology and geophysics.

Camron Hosseini

Undergraduate Student

Camron is an undergraduate in mechanical engineering at UCSB. He measures hydraulic pressure losses across drip emitters.

Raaghav Thirumaligai

Undergraduate Student

Raaghav is interested in fluid mechanics. They build systems to characterize cohesion in granular materials and have worked on clogging of fiber suspensions.

Thomas Yu

Undergraduate Student

Thomas is an undergraduate in mechanical engineering at UCSB. He works on fluidization and drying of wet granular beds.

Thanvi Anand

Undergraduate Student

Thanvi is an undergraduate in mechanical engineering at UCSB. She studies clogging and the fluid dynamics behind it.

Alexis Lin

Undergraduate Student

Alexis is an undergraduate in mechanical engineering. She explores crater formation on cohesive granular surfaces.

Grace Harvill

Undergraduate Student

Grace was an undergraduate in mechanical engineering in 2023–2024. She studied how wet powders dry.

Ariel Nunez Del Prado

Undergraduate Student (EUREKA)

Ariel joined through the EUREKA program in summer 2024. He explored how granular piles form and spread.

Sacha Escudier

Undergraduate Student

Sacha worked on several clogging projects from 2022 to 2024. He is now a PhD student at Princeton.

Mark Cullen

Undergraduate Student

Mark studied how cohesion changes a granular stream and its breakup during 2023–2024.

Cole Giusto

Undergraduate Student

Cole focused on droplet pinch-off in viscoelastic fiber suspensions in 2023–2024.

Riley Tinianov

Undergraduate Student

Riley worked from Winter 2023 to Winter 2024. He explored capillary flows of particulate suspensions.

Anuj Acharya

Undergraduate Student

Anuj, a chemical engineering student, studied cohesion from capillary bridges between particles in 2023–2024.

Juwon Park

Undergraduate Student

Juwon investigated the collapse of granular columns to model cliff failure.

Jackie Park

Undergraduate Student

Jackie, from Chemical Engineering, worked in Fall 2023 and Winter 2024. She studied how material chemistry affects drying.

Jackie Li

Undergraduate Student

In 2023, Jackie built setups to dry wet powders using mechanical agitation and air flows.

Yihsuan (Danny) Lai

Undergraduate Student

Danny, a Chemical Engineering senior in 2023, designed shear cells to measure properties of cohesive granular media.

Langqi (Michael) Xing

Undergraduate Student

Michael worked from 2020 to 2022 on capillary flows of suspensions and cohesive grains. He is now a PhD student at Northeastern University.

Michael Ka Ho Lee

Undergraduate Student

Michael worked in 2021 on dip‑coating with particulate suspensions.

Connor Tang

Undergraduate Student

Connor modeled clog formation and studied how pulsating flows affect clogging in 2021–2022.

Mingze Gong

Undergraduate Student

Mingze studied cohesive granular flows, including column collapse and erosion by a turbulent jet, from 2019 to 2021. He later pursued an MS at UCLA.

Kian Ahmadzadeh-Heravi

Undergraduate Student

Kian investigated how cohesion changes the penetration depth of low‑speed projectiles in 2020–2021.

Freda Lababidi

Undergraduate Student

Freda explored how anisotropic particles are entrained on a coated film during 2020–2021.

Sivar Azadi

Undergraduate Student

Sivar, in Physics, studied erosion of granular beds by vortices and turbulent flows in 2019–2020.

Hanming Li

Undergraduate Student

Hanming examined how particle size affects bubble rise in suspensions in 2019–2020.

Joanne Steiner

Visiting PhD Student

Joanne visited from FAST, Paris‑Saclay, in 2023. Her PhD studied erosion by an oscillating disk. At UCSB she worked on cohesive granular beds.

Ben McMillan

Visiting PhD Student

Ben visited from Cambridge in late 2022. He used photoelasticity to probe clogging in a 2D silo.

Simon Brient

Visiting PhD Student

Simon visited from IJLRDA, Sorbonne Université, in 2022. He studied water‑film flows and worked on droplet impacts on films at UCSB.

Wladimir Sarlin

Visiting PhD Student

Wladimir came from FAST in 2022. He worked on the dynamics of cohesive granular materials and impulse waves from collapses.

Adrien Gans

Visiting PhD Student

Adrien visited from IUSTI, Marseille, in 2019. He studied flowability of powders and the collapse of cohesive grains.

Théophile Meiller

Visiting Student

Théophile visited from ESPCI Paris—PSL in 2024. He studied how drops of complex fluids impact granular materials.

Katy Tegou

Visiting Student

Katy, a graduate student at ESPCI Paris, visited in 2024. She worked on erosion of cohesive grains by turbulent flows.

Guillaume Bonnesson

Visiting Student

Guillaume, from ESPCI Paris‑PSL, studied flow instabilities in millifluidic channels.

Vincent Poitier

Visiting Student

Vincent visited from Sorbonne Université in 2024, co‑advised with Frédéric Gibou. He simulated precipitation and dissolution in porous media.

Matthis Vaudable

Visiting Student

Matthis visited from CentraleSupélec in 2023. He analyzed cohesive granular collapse on an inclined plane.

Rémi Thomas

Visiting Student

Rémi, an MS Physics student at ENS Lyon, worked in 2023 on suspension flows in millifluidic systems.

Raphaël Bouguemari

Visiting Student

Raphaël interned with us in 2023. He worked on the rheology and flow of suspensions and mud.

Nathan Vani

Visiting Student

Nathan visited in 2021–2022 and studied clogging of suspensions in confined systems. He is now a PhD student at PMMH, ESPCI.

Sebastien Kuchly

Visiting Student

Sebastien visited from ESPCI in 2022. He examined transport and clogging of fiber suspensions.

Baptiste Jouron

Visiting Student

Baptiste, from École Polytechnique, visited in 2022. He worked on reactive flows in porous media with co‑advising by F. Gibou.

Jules Tampier

Visiting Student

Jules visited in 2022 from IPGP and ENS de Lyon. He studied erosion of granular beds by impacting droplets.

Sumukh Peddada

Visiting Student

Sumukh, a visiting undergraduate in 2021, worked on bubble dynamics in viscoelastic fluids. He later started an MS at the University of Washington.

Anezka Kvasnickova

Visiting Student

Anezka visited in 2020 from ESPCI Paris. She ran numerical simulations of thin‑film flows.

Guillaume Grosjean

Visiting Student

Guillaume joined remotely in 2020 from Polytech Montpellier. He modeled flow through porous aggregates.

Anthony Rey-Pommier

Visiting Student

Anthony visited in 2019 from ENS Paris‑Saclay. He studied confinement effects during the flow of porous spheres.

Jean‑Baptiste Boutin

Visiting Student

Jean‑Baptiste visited from ESPCI in 2019. He worked on the deposition of suspensions on capillary tube walls.

Kayley Xu

High‑School Visiting Student

Kayley joined the UCSB RMP in summer 2024. She studied fiber extrusion for liquid printing.

Hailey Van

High‑School Visiting Student

Hailey joined the RMP in summer 2023. She explored how biopolymers and cohesion affect cliff collapse.

Jacob Winefeld

High‑School Visiting Student

Jacob, a senior at Palo Alto High School, studied the clogging transition of cohesive granular flows through a silo in summer 2023.

Jonathan Xue

High‑School Visiting Student

Jonathan joined the UCSB RMP in summer 2023. He worked on flow and clogging in silos.

Kate Jang

High‑School Visiting Student

Kate took part in the RMP in summer 2022. She studied how biopolymers change microplastic settling.

Steven Amanat

High‑School Visiting Student

Steven joined the UCSB RMP. He examined how turbulent air jets interact with cohesive grains.