Denis Aslangil (PI)
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
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
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
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
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.
Grayston Diblasi
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
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.
Nicholas Pak
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
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.
Current Undergraduate Students
Nathaniel Blanchard
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.
Remembrance
Tyler Prine
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 Fall 2024
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurin-thuney-pe-a67aa97b/
Ronald Lee MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Fall 2023
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-lee-jr/
Brian Goldstein MS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics in Fall 2022
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
NEWS
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Dr. Aslangil joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado School of Minesas an Assistant Professor (08/2024).
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Denis Aslangil, & Man Long Wong publish an article titled "Investigation of strong isothermal stratification effects on multi-mode compressible Rayleigh–Taylor instability" in Physics of Fluids (07/2023).
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Denis Aslangil, Andrew Lawrie, & Arindam Banerjee publish an article titled "Effects of variable deceleration periods on Rayleigh-Taylor instability with acceleration reversals" in PhysRevE (06/2022).
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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).
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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.
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Juan Saenz, Denis Aslangil, & Daniel Livescu publish an article titled "Filtering, averaging, and scale dependency in homogeneous variable-density turbulence" in the Physics of Fluids (2/2021). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0040337
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Denis Aslangil (PI) & Man Long Wong, "Compressibility effects in two-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor Instability", US NSF - XSEDE Startup allocation (12/2020).
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Denis Aslangil, Daniel Livescu & Arindam Banerjee, publish a conference paper titled "Acceleration reversal effects on buoyancy-driven variable-density turbulence", Proceedings of 22nd Australasian Fluid Mechanics Conference AFMC2020, (12/2020). https://doi.org/10.14264/a55b8c2
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Denis Aslangil, Zachary Farley, Andrew Lawrie, & Arindam Banerjee publish an article titled "Rayleigh–Taylor Instability With Varying Periods of Zero Acceleration" in the Journal of Fluid Engineerings (05/2020). https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4048348
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Denis Aslangil, Daniel Livescu & Arindam Banerjee publish an article titled "Effects of Atwood and Reynolds numbers on the evolution of buoyancy-driven homogeneous variable-density turbulence" in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (05/2020). https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2020.268
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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.
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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
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Denis Aslangil attends NSF Workshop on Exuberance of Machine Learning in Transport Phenomena in Dallas, Texas (02/2020).
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Denis Aslangil attends the 3rd Physics Informed Machine Learning Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico (01/2020).
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Denis Aslangil attends ASME IMECE 2019 in Salt Lake City, Utah (11/2019).