Mechanical Engineering Seminar

Title:

Advancing engineering and healthcare using computational physics and data-driven modeling

Speaker:

Dr. Karthik Menon

Affiliation:

Stanford, CA

When:

Monday, January 29, 2024 at 11:00:00 AM   

Where:

MRDC Building, Room 4211

Host:

Dr. Alex Alexeev
alexander.alexeev@me.gatech.edu

Abstract

Fluid dynamics is central to our biggest challenges in engineering, sustainability, and healthcare – from cardiovascular disease and renewable energy to future personalized medicine and autonomous robots. To address these challenges, my research combines physics-based and data-driven computation to answer two complementary questions: 1. Given a multiscale flow field, how much does each feature influence the dynamics? 2. Given local dynamics measurements, what are the features of the corresponding multiscale flow field? These questions have broad implications. In fluid-structure interactions, spanning heart valves to wind turbines, flow separation, vortex interactions, and other non-linear mechanisms confound our understanding of the resulting dynamics. I will present novel physics-based and data-enabled methods to disentangle these physics and quantify the role of distinct mechanisms and individual flow features on the pressure, force, and noise they induce. I will discuss new insights into flow-induced oscillations and future directions in design, control, and flow sensing for applications in aerospace, renewable energy, autonomous robots, and biomedical devices. In the treatment of cardiovascular disease – the leading cause of death globally – computational models are an emerging tool for non-invasive diagnosis and predictive treatment planning. However, the promise of simulation guided personalized medicine requires digital twins that leverage patient-specific clinical data to estimate personalized hemodynamics for each patient. I will highlight the importance of patient-specific modeling for coronary artery diseases and demonstrate a novel personalized multi-scale framework, which is informed by clinical imaging, spanning large arteries to capillaries. I will also discuss future applications in uncertainty-aware treatment planning and physics enhanced imaging.


Biography

Karthik Menon is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, where his research focuses on patient-specific computational modeling of cardio¬vascular blood flow and uncertainty quantification. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2021, where his doctoral work focused on the analysis of fluid-structure interactions and vortex-dominated flows. His broad interests include fluid mechanics, computational physics, and data-driven methods.

Notes

Refreshments will be served.