Founder and Director

Dr. Nesrin Sarigul-Klijn

The DynaaTECC Research Lab is under the directorship of Dr. Sarigul-Klijn. She directs M.S. thesis and Ph.D. dissertation research of 4-6 students each year. Her research areas are in minimum weight design with aeroelastic and acoustic constraints; landing recovery system studies: winged, rotor, or parachute recovery system trades and scaled flight testing; development of advanced finite element methods to solve steep gradient problems of high temperature due to aerodynamic heating or shock loading; environmental noise control; flow induced vibrations; innovative power generation systems; and long duration space flight effects on the human spine.

Dr. Sarigul-Klijn’s complete biography can be found here.

Phone: (530) 752-0682
Email: nsarigulklijn (at) ucdavis.edu

Graduate Researchers

Michael Buonarati, Ph.D. Candidate

Michael received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles in May of 2017. During his undergraduate degree, Michael was an award recipient of the Intertek Scholarship and Internship program. He also interned with Intertek where he worked with a 7-axis Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM), and analyzed automotive parts. Michael was the founder and team captain of the SAE Aero Design Team in 2016 and 2017. Michael is an avid rugby player and is currently playing for the UC Davis team. Michael received his Master’s degree in 2020 from UC Davis. Michael’s PhD research focus is experimental aspects of airframe noise reduction using tail-tabs.

Email: mbuonarati (at) ucdavis.edu

Matthew Gabel, Ph.D. Candidate

Matthew received his B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Davis in 2017. He is interested in aircraft design, dynamics, and multi-disciplinary research in flow-structure interactions. Matthew is currently pursuing a PhD in using gradient adaptive transfinite elements to model fluid structure interactions and radar cross section for design of aerospace systems.

Email: mgabel (at) ucdavis.edu

Peter Lee, Ph.D. Candidate

Peter obtained his B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis in 2012. Peter received his MS degree in 2019. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D., researching automatic flight control for aerospace systems. His research interests are focused around aerospace systems and computational methods.

Email: pcmlee (at) ucdavis.edu

Sreejith Ravichandran, M.S. Candidate

Sreejith obtained his B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and joined DynaaTECC Lab in 2022. His master’s research focuses on CFD simulation of micro tail-tab designs as a means of reducing aircraft noise.

Gregory Mellos, M.S./Ph.D. Student

Gregory Mellos is a Target Fabrication Engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) where he currently works on developing and characterizing high precision complex mechanical designs. These designs must maintain high levels of accuracy and must remain in spec when subjected to extreme cryogenic conditions. Greg has joined the DynaaTECC lab as a MS student in order to grow his skills in computational modeling. Currently his research is looking into applying new finite element formulations techniques on unsteady and compressible Navier–Stokes problems, focusing on cavity flows.

Email: gmellos (at) ucdavis.edu

Blake Hannah, M.S. /Ph. D. Student

Blake earned his B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis in June of 2020. During his time at UC Davis, he was a member of the Space and Satellite Systems Club where he designed, manufactured, and tested a reaction wheel implemented on the team’s CubeSat set to launch into Low-Earth Orbit in 2021. He also earned an athletic scholarship as a baseball player on the UC Davis Division I Baseball Team. Blake plans to use his background in satellites to research solar sailing for his M.S. degree project and continue onto his Ph.D. dissertation research.

Email: bjhannah (at) ucdavis.edu

DynaaTECC Recent Alumni

Tim Marchelli, Ph.D.

Tim received his B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering, and his M.S. in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering from UC Davis. His Master’s thesis was entitled “One Dimensional Damage Model of a C-17 Transport Aircraft”. Tim worked at Northrop Grumman as a structural engineer and operations researcher, and at General Atomics as a flight controls software engineer. Tim’s Ph.D. dissertation research focused on flow and flexible structure interactions of aerospace systems via finite element based high order formulations involving gradient adaptive transfinite elements.

Parakh Vyas, M.S. Parakh’s master’s degree research was in design and testing of in-flight deployable acoustic noise control devices

Jonathan Boyd, M.S. Jonathan’s research was focused on power generation from an oscillating delta wing.

Megna Hari, Ph.D.

Megna received her B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from UC Davis in 2014. Then became a member of DynaaTECC research team and received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with an emphasis in flow structure interactions and slosh dynamics research. Megna has held five internships at the Lockheed Martin Space System Company — one in Engineering Excellence, four in Orion Loads and Dynamics prior to joining as a full time researcher.

Joe Barthel, Ph.D.

Joe received a B.S. in both Physics and Astrophysics from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2010. He then went on to UC Davis to obtain his M.S. in Physics with a thesis entitled, “Using Hydrogen Fluoride as an H2 Tracer” using infrared spectroscopy in 2013. Joe joined DynaaTECC research lab in 2014 and completed his Ph.D. degree in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with a research focus in the design optimization of radiation shielding for human space missions. Joe was the recipient of the 2015 N&M Sarigul-Klijn Flight Research/Space Engineering Award.

Matthew J. Mills, M.S.

Matthew obtained a Bachelor of Engineering, majoring in Aerospace Engineering, from Carleton University in 2016. He completed his MS degree in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. His research was focused on determining the effect of long duration space flight on the human spine through the use of mathematical and computational models. Matthew was the recipient of the 2017 N&M Sarigul-Klijn Flight Research/Space Engineering Award.

Molly Townsend, Ph.D.

Molly received a Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering from Clemson University, and subsequently her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering in 2017 from UC Davis. Her dissertation was entitled “An Investigation of the Finite Element Simulation of Spaceflight-Induced Gravitational Unloading of the Whole Spine”. Molly is currently a Computational Biomechanics Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Biomechanics, Materials, and Medicine (CIBM3) in the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Some of Molly’s noteworthy accomplishments include the NSF GRFP Fellowship (2013-2016), the GAANN Fellowship (2012), and a summer internship at the NASA Glenn Research Center Space Academy (2011).

Alex Pensado, M.S.

Alex graduated from UC Davis with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a B.S. in Aerospace Science in 2015. Alex continued in the Mechanical and Aerospace Department to received his M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 2017 under the supervision of Dr. Sarigul-Klijn. His thesis was entitled “Scalability of a Tension Cone Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator”. The objective of his thesis was to systematically study the scalability of the supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator tension cone and computationally simulate the minimum inflation pressure required for Earth and Mars deployment conditions. During Alex’s graduate studies he held an internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as an Engineering Analyst Intern, and he is currently a Mechanical Engineer at the Lockheed Martin Space System Company.

Lab Members