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Denis Aslangil (PI)

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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

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Ahmet is a second-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/

Ryan Nguyen

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Ryan is an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering student from Colorado School of Mines (Spring 2025). He is currently a summer intern at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ryan will continue as a PhD student at Mines, and his research will focus on fluid-structure interactions, two-way coupled particle-laden compressible flows, and parallel code development for high-fidelity CFD. His hobbies include riding and modifying motorcycles and tasting all the fried chicken spots in the local area.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-nguyen-a39426252/

Allie Riley

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Allie is a first-year PhD student in the Advanced Energy Systems (AES) program at Colorado School of Mines. Her research is with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in the Water-Power Foundational R&D Department, focusing on wave energy simulations. She got her Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Davis, and she enjoys climbing, snowboarding, and playing music.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-riley-087241268/

Yiyang Chen

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Yiyang is a first year PhD student in the Advanced Energy Systems program, a collaboration between Colorado School of Mines and NREL. His research interests include computational modeling, energy resilience, and extreme weather phenomena. He received his bachelors degree from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Agricultural Engineering with a minor in computational science. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, climbing, and camping.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yiyangbobchen/

Grayston Diblasi

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Gray is a Master's student in Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, where he also completed his Bachelor's degree in Spring 2025. His research focuses on the compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability and turbulent mixing. He is a summer research intern at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Outside of academics, Gray enjoys snowboarding, rock climbing, and tinkering with mechanical projects.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grayston-diblasi-0240b7239/

Paul Mekhedjian

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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.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmekhedjian/

Nicholas Pak

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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

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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.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hutson-staggs/

Current Undergraduate Students

Nathaniel Blanchard

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Nathan is a first-year Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering student at the Colorado School of Mines (double major). His academic interests include the study of magnetohydrodynamic flows for aerospace electric propulsion applications, as well as kernel-based approximation methods for compressible, turbulent flows. Nathan is an endurance runner, musician, and dancer; he also enjoys spending time with his vinyl record collection. 

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathaniel-blanchard

Remembrance

Tyler Prine

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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 Fal2024

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurin-thuney-pe-a67aa97b/

Ronald Lee MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Fal2023

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-lee-jr/

Brian Goldstein MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Fal2022

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briangoldstein25/

Undergraduate Alumni

Grayston Diblasi BS in Mechanical Engineering in Spring 2025

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grayston-diblasi-0240b7239/

Ryan Nguyen BS in Mechanical Engineering in Spring 2025

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-nguyen-a39426252/

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

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminprobertson0/

NEWS

  • 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).
  • 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.
  • Denis Aslangil (PI) & Man Long Wong, "Compressibility effects in two-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor Instability", US NSF - XSEDE Startup allocation (12/2020).
  • 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.​
  • 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
  • Denis Aslangil attends the 3rd Physics Informed Machine Learning Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico (01/2020).
  • Denis Aslangil attends ASME IMECE 2019 in Salt Lake City, Utah (11/2019).

Contact

Mechanical Engineering,
Colorado School of Mines,

1610 Illinois Street,
Golden, CO 80401

denis.aslangil@mines.edu

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