Faculty Members
Student Members
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NON-EQUILIBRIUM KINETICS &
RADIATIVE GAS DYNAMICS LABORATORY
Schematic of EAST Facility
Professor Panesi's research focuses on the development of improved physical models to study the detailed chemistry of non-equilibrium reacting flows. Previous models were constructed from legacy experiments (performed in the 1950s and 1960s), and were mostly phenomenological in nature, due to limited computational resources.
Scientists and engineers now have access to better chemical databases formulated ab initio from quantum mechanics calculations. These databases enable researchers to construct improved physical models for use in a variety of engineering applications, which is the focus of Panesi's work.
Professor Panesi plans to take model development a step further, by incorporating uncertainty quantification to improve confidence in his model predictions. Uncertainty quantification can be used as a powerful tool to determine a model's ability to predict critical phenomena that are important to an application.
Panesi has worked on these types of problems for the past three years while a research scientist for the DOE-funded Center for Predictive Engineering and Computational Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also been in close collaboration with chemists and experimentalists at the Electric Arc Shock Tube Facility at NASA Ames Research Center. While continuing his study of re-entry physics, Panesi plans to expand his research to parallel fields of combustion, as well as plasma discharges and plasma-assisted combustion.
Panesi received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the von Kármán Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium in 2009, in cooperation with the Università degli Studi in Pisa, Italy. He earned a Master's degree in fluid dynamics in 2005 from VKI, and a Master's degree in aerospace engineering from Università di Pisa in 2003. Panesi is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a member of the European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences. Among his honors have been the David Weaver Best Student Paper in Thermophysics at the 42nd Annual AIAA Conference; the 2011 Award for Fundamentals on Aerothermodynamics at the 7th Annual Symposium on Aerothermodynamics for Space Vehicles; a 2008 CTR Summer Program Fellowship at Stanford University; and NATO Fellowships for his Master's and Ph.D. studies at VKI.
MARCO PANESI - Assistant Professor/Coordinator
Robyn MacDonald is currently a graduate student in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the development of collisional-radiative models for hypersonic flows.
Robyn was part of the NASA Academy the summer 2013.
ROBYN MACDONALD - Graduate Research Assistant
Kevin Heritier is currently a graduate student in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the development of reduced models for non-equilibrium reacting hypersonic flows.
Kevin received his Bachelor's degree in engineering from École Centrale de Lille in 2012.
KEVIN HERITIER - Graduate Research Assistant
Amal Sahai is currently a graduate student in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the development of collisional-radiative models for hypersonic flows.
AMAL SAHAI - Graduate Research Assistant
Amal Sahai is currently a graduate student in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the development of collisional-radiative models for hypersonic flows.
COREY ENDERLIN - Undergraduate Research Assistant
Amal Sahai is currently a graduate student in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the development of collisional-radiative models for hypersonic flows.
SHRUTAKEERTI MALLIKARJUN VAGISHWARI - Graduate Research Assistant
Collaborators
Dr. Richard Jaffe - NASA Ames Research Center
Dr. Winifred Huo - NASA Ames Research Center
Dr. David Schwenke - NASA Ames Research Center
Dr. Galina Chaban - NASA Ames Research Center
Dr. Yen Liu - NASA Ames Research Center
Dr. Aaron Brandis - NASA Ames Research Center
Dr. Andrea Lani - von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics
Prof. Thierry Magin - von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics
Dr. Anne Bourdon - École Centrale Paris
Prof. Arnaud Bultel - Université de Rouen
Dr. Nagi Mansour - NASA Ames Research Center