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Job Opening: POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

DESCRIPTION

The Computational Turbulence and Visualization Lab (CTV Lab) at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has an immediate opening for a Post-Doctoral Research Associate.

The position (code: DNS) is sought in the area of numerical predictions of turbulent high-speed boundary layer problems in supersonic/hypersonic flow regime and complex geometries. The employed numerical approach will be mostly Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS); however, Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) is also available in the in-house flow solver. We are looking for highly motivated candidates with strong HPC skills (MPI Fortran 90/95, C, C++, CUDA Python), turbulent boundary layer theory, Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS), and user experience on CPU and GPU supercomputers and clusters. Evidence of productive academic and publication records, excellent verbal and written English skills, the ability to work both independently and as part of a group of researchers with diverse academic backgrounds are mandatory. Current and funded projects in the research group involve wall-curvature effects on high-speed flows, boundary layer detachment due to streamwise and streamline pressure gradient and high-speed crossflow jets.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required qualifications: applicants must have a Ph.D. in Aerospace, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science or a related field, to be awarded prior to starting the position. The candidates should have a strong background in the following areas: finite element/volume analysis, turbulence statistics, coherent structures, scientific visualization, and programming. Furthermore, oral communication and written skills are essential as part of the dissemination purposes (publication and oral presentations).

Responsibilities for the position include computational fluid dynamics analysis and postprocessing activities, manuscript writing for publications in scientific journals and for grant proposals, oral presentations during group meetings. Additionally, there may be lab management responsibilities, including supervision of undergraduate and/or graduate students. The position requires attendance at conferences, portfolios, and seminars. It is expected that the post-doctoral researcher will collaborate effectively with colleagues in the high-speed flow and scientific visualization community.

Position duration: The initial appointment will be for 1 year with the possibility of being re-appointed for additional years based on satisfactory performance and availability of funding.

Salary and fringe benefits: it is negotiable depending on prior years of post-doctoral experience. The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) offers an excellent benefits package for its employees. For more information on the available benefits for full-time employees, please review the Employee Benefits at UTSA.

MISCELLANEOUS

UTSA is one of the 13 University of Texas System’s campuses and is located in the City of San Antonio. The Department of Mechanical Engineering and The Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design (CEID) have experienced sustained growth in student population, number of faculty, and research awards. The College includes five departments/schools: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Management, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and School of Architecture and Planning. Several research centers are also hosted within CEID, including the Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute, Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, Center for Excellence in Engineering Education, Open Cloud Institute, and Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The University enjoys strong ties with other research institutions and companies located in San Antonio. These include Southwest Research Institute, CPS Energy, Texas Biomedical Research Institute, Joint Base San Antonio, San Antonio Military Medical Center, and UT Health San Antonio.

San Antonio is the second largest city in the great state of Texas and the seventh largest city in the United States. It is the destination of 7 million visitors each year. A recent survey ranked San Antonio eighth among America’s top 10 destination cities. In San Antonio, the health care industry is a $7 billion enterprise employing more than 100,000 people. It is one of the city’s three largest employers, along with the military, tourism, education and recreation. With over 300 days of sunshine annually, San Antonio and surrounding areas offer an abundance of outdoor sports and recreation. Numerous rivers in the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio provide opportunities for canoeing, tubing and white-water rafting. Area lakes attract fishermen, as well as water skiing, jet skiing, and sailing enthusiasts. The Gulf coast is only 100 miles away. Working ranches throughout Central and South Texas are available as hunting leases for wild game, while dude ranches offer a taste of the Old West, complete with horseback riding. Numerous state parks offer opportunities for hiking in the rugged terrain of the Hill Country.

HOW TO APPLY:

To apply for this position, please ATTACH (i) a 1-page cover letter stating your research interests and career goals, (ii) a detailed CV, and (iii) contact information for three references and email to Prof. Guillermo Araya at juan.araya@utsa.edu quoting “DNS Post-doc position” in the email subject. Applicants who are selected for interviews must show proof that they will be eligible and qualified to work in the United States by the time of hire. U.S. citizenship or permanent residency preferred, but not required. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed. UTSA is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. Women, minorities, veterans, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. For further information, please visit the Computational Turbulence and Visualization Lab or contact Prof. Araya at juan.araya@utsa.edu

AIAA Aviation 2024 Forum
Participation in Conferences
  • CTVLab members have participated in two conferences. Odai Natsheh delivered a presentation titled “Compressibility effects on the budget of the momentum & energy equations in turbulent boundary layers” at the ASTFE TFEC2024 Conference. Christian Lagares (“Turbulence Modelling: An inverse problem or a forward dilemma?”) and Guillermo Araya (“The effect of wall curvature on supersonic turbulent boundary layers at high Reynolds numbers via DNS”) participated in the American Physical Society’s April Meeting 2024, Sacramento, California on April 3-6, 2024.
Recent CTVLab members
  • The CTVLab welcomes new members: Sakshi More (graduate research assistant), Dr. Subhajit Roy (postdoctoral research associate) and Dr. Rakesh Ranjan (research scientist).
Free Online Workshop
  • Introduction to Supercomputing: Online free NSF-sponsored workshop for 1st and 2nd year undergraduate students (high school students from 11 and 12 grades are also encouraged to participate) is organized on February 15, 2024. More information and registration details can be found HERE. A flyer with workshop information can be downloaded from Flyer-Introduction to Supercomputing
Energies: Special Issue

The Special Issue “High-Speed Aerodynamics and High Energy and Efficiency Aerospace Propulsion System: Modeling and Optimization” is focused on documenting innovative developments in the fields of high-speed fluid dynamics related to external and internal fluid flows for aerospace applications and basic research.

Dr. Guillermo Araya
Guest Editor

AIAA SCITECH 2024 Forum
ICNAAM 2023
  • Some CTVLab members (C. Lagares, D. Paeres, M. Ramirez and G. Araya) have participated in the 21st International Conference of Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics, Crete, Greece (September 11-17, 2023) via four virtual presentations and four proceedings.
UG Research Program at UTSA
  • Undergraduate student Brandon Antron was awarded a fellowship for the Summer and Fall 2023 Klesse College UG Research Program at UTSA. Congrats!
Recent CTVLab members
  • The CTVLab welcomes new graduate research assistants (Akshay Kulshrestha and Matthew Holland) and undergraduate research assistant, Brandon Antron, who joined us in 2023.
AFOSR Portfolio Review
  • Dr. Araya was invited to the 2023 Unsteady Aerodynamics Program Review (July 10-13 2023) for an oral presentation (“Coherent structure assessment in high-speed crossflow jets”) of AFOSR award #FA9550-23-1-0241.
Grants
Grants
  • PI Araya has been awarded $97,097 by the AFOSR to analyze the dynamics of turbulent coherent structures in high-speed crossflow jets via Direct Numerical Simulation (#FA9550-23-1-0241).
  • Program Officers: Dr. Roger Greenwood.
  • Period of performance: 1 MAY 2023 through 30 APR 2025.
Invited Collaborator and Speaker

Dr. Alan B. Craig is an independent consultant in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Visualization, and High Performance Computing. He was invited by the CTVLab to collaborate in research projects and to deliver a Mechanical Engineering Dept. seminar on April 20, 2023 titled “VR, AR, AND THE BRAIN: CHANGING THE WAY WE TEACH, LEARN, AND RESEARCH.”

High-school Workshop (New Edition!)
  • Modeling Your World: Online free NSF-sponsored workshop for high school students is organized on April 29, 2023. More information and registration details can be found HERE.
NSF-CAREER award transfer
High-school Workshop
  • Modeling Your World: Online free NSF-sponsored workshop for high school students is organized on March 17, 2023. More information and registration details can be found HERE.
Wayne and Julie Fagan Endowed Fellowship in Mechanical Engineering
  • Dr. Araya was appointed the Wayne and Julie Fagan Endowed Fellowship in Mechanical Engineering in the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design (UTSA) on January 18, 2023.
Computational Turbulence and Visualization Lab (CTV Lab) has launched at UTSA
AFOSR Portfolio Review
Summer internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory
David Paeres has been selected as sponsored MSc student in the 2022 Computational Physics Summer Workshop organized by the Los Alamos National Laboratory Advanced Scientific Computing (ASC) Program during June 13 – August 19, 2022. Congrats!
Grants
  • The HPCVLab has been awarded $210,053 by the AFOSR for the project titled “Coherent structure assessment in high-speed crossflow jets” (#FA9550-22-1-0089) in collaboration with Dr. Jansen from the University of Colorado-Boulder.
  • Program Officers: Dr. Gregg L. Abate and Dr. Daniel Montes.
  • Portfolio: Unsteady Aerodynamics and Turbulent Flows.
  • Period of performance: February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2025.
Grants
  • Our project titled “Scientific Visualization of Big Data” was funded by the CAWT-ITG3 program (NSF #1849243), $80,000, 08/12/2021 to 08/11/2022
AFOSR Portfolio Review
Invited Speaker
  • Prof. Beverley J. McKeon from the California Institute of Technology delivered a webinar titled Control of turbulent wall shear flows and the potential for “designer turbulence” on Wednesday, May 5th, 2021 3:00PM – 4:00PM invited by the HPCV lab.
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
  • Student Christian Lagares was awarded the 2021 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF). The project title is “Towards advanced turbulence modelling in reacting hypersonic flows and complex geometries via Direct Numerical Simulation and Machine Learning.” Congrats!
2021 AIAA SciTech Forum
  • Christian Lagares, David Paeres and Guillermo Araya participated in the 2021 AIAA SciTech Forum. 11–15 & 19–21 January 2021 (VIRTUAL EVENT) by means of oral presentations and conference proceedings.
2020 APS Division of Fluid Dynamics
  • Christian Lagares, David Paeres and Guillermo Araya participated in the 73rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics. November 22–24, 2020 (Virtual event) by means of oral presentations and video displays. 
Distinguished Professor Award
  • Dr. Araya was granted the 2018-2019 Distinguished Professor Award, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at UPRM.
AIAA Associate Fellow
  • Dr. Araya was selected AIAA Associate Fellow Class of 2021.
AFOSR Portfolio Review
  • Dr. Araya was invited to the 2020 AFOSR/ONR/HVSI Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics Portfolio Review (Virtual) for an oral presentation (“Effects of wall curvature on hypersonic turbulent spatially-developing boundary layers”) of AFOSR award #FA9550-17-1-0051.
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
  • Student German Saltar was awarded the 2020 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF). Congrats!
NSF Bridge to the Doctorate
  • Doctoral Candidate Christian Lagares was awarded the “Bridge to the Doctorate” fellowship from the National Science Foundation through the Puerto Rico Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (PR-LSAMP). The proposed project is titled “Advanced Turbulence Modeling in Reacting Hypersonic Flows and Complex Geometries via DNS”. Congrats!
NSF CAREER AWARD
2020 AIAA SciTech Forum
  • Dr. Araya gave a presentation titled “Reynolds number dependency in supersonic spatially-developing turbulent boundary layers” at the 2020-AIAA SciTech Forum, 6 – 10 January, Orlando, FL, 2020.
Seminars
  • During Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 the HPCVLab organized two interesting seminars: “Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR): The Media and Technology” by Dr. Alan Craig (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and “Towards scale resolving simulations of industrial relevant turbulent flows: what can we do and what are we missing?” by Dr. Oriol Lehmkuhl (Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, Spain)
XSEDE EMPOWER Program
PhD student
  • Christian Lagares joined the HPCVLab as a PhD student and Research Assistant (Fall 2019).
NASA PR Space Grant Fellowship
  • German G. Saltar received the NASA PR Space Grant Fellowship ($10,000) for the 2019-2020 academic year on July 17, 2019. Congrats!
AFOSR Portfolio Review
  • Dr. Araya was invited to the 2019 AFOSR/ONR/HVSI Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics Portfolios Review for an oral presentation of award #FA9550-17-1-0051. The event was held during July 8-12, 2019 in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO.
2019 AIAA AVIATION Forum
  • Dr. Araya gave two presentations titled “Direct simulation of a Mach-5 turbulent spatially-developing boundary layer” and “Visualization of turbulent events in wall-bounded flows via Virtual Reality” at the 49th AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference, AIAA AVIATION Forum, (AIAA 3131876) 17 – 21 June, Dallas, TX, 2019.
Invited Lecture by Dr. Todd Michal
  • Dr. Todd Michal from The Boeing Company delivered a presentation titled “Development of an Anisotropic Adaptive Meshing Capability with Application to Boeing Aircraft” via videoconference on November 27, 2018 invited by Dr. Araya and sponsored by the AIAA-Mayaguez student branch.
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