People

Faculty

Dr. Shyam Menon

Dr. Menon is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Louisiana State University. He received his B.E in Mechanical Engineering at VJTI, Mumbai, and M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park. He has since conducted postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Southern California, and at Oregon State University. His research interests are primarily associated with multiphase flows with application to power generation and propulsion. He is the lead PI of the Energy and Propulsion Laboratory at LSU. (CV)

Graduate Students

James Leung

James is a graduate student pursuing a Doctoral Degree in Mechanical Engineering. James received his Master’s degree from Michigan State University. His research is focused on shock-induced aerobreakup of liquid droplets.

Naga  Varuna Chaitanya Guntapalli

Naga, is a graduate student pursuing a Doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering. He has done his Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering at Gitam University and his Master of Technology in Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics at Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. He has worked as a Calibration Engineer at Veoneer Safety Systems Pvt Ltd. His research focuses on developing combustion relevant functional relationships for Sustainable aviation fuels.

Joshua Moore

Joshua is a graduate student pursuing a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. His research focuses on pneumatic conveying of wood particles and the determination of terminal, pickup and saltation velocities under differing ambient conditions. 

 

 

Undergraduate Researchers

Luke Russell

Ian Archangel

James Yu

Arman Davis

Wesley Hutcherson

Russell Gaerlen

Thomas Roussel

Hunter Allen

Christopher Cuntz

Reese Ledet

Previous Lab Members

Graduate Students

Hansen Jones (M.S, 2018)

Hansen earned his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from LSU and spent time working for Firefly Space Systems at their engineering offices outside Austin, TX before choosing to return to LSU to pursue his M.S. degree. Hansen’s research focused on water jet interactions with supersonic gas jets and characterization of resulting sprays using non-intrusive diagnostic techniques. Hansen is currently a liquid rocket propulsion test engineer at SpaceX.

Darren Dehesa (M.S, 2020)

Darren received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from LSU in addition to a minor in Aerospace Engineering. His research focused on development and use of simulation models for dynamic powertrain performance of small unmanned aircraft systems using MATLAB/Simulink. He is currently a Manufacturing Engineering with Boeing working at NASA Michoud.

Wanjun Dang (PhD, 2021)

Wanjun received her Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Wuhan University of Technology. She served for three years as an automobile engineer at Ford Motor Company. Her PhD research involved the use of droplet based techniques to measure fuel physical properties using micro-liter quantities with application to bio-fuel characterization for IC engines through the DOE Co-Optima project. Wanjun is currently a post-doctoral researcher at DOE's NREL laboratory.

 

Varun Viswamithra (PhD, 2023)
Varun completed his Master of Science degree from University of Texas at Arlington with research in the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). He has worked as an Application Engineer intern at Exa Corporation (Dassault Systems). His research focuses on use of  Ammonia as a carbon-free fuel with application to swirl combustors in gas turbine engines for stationary power generation. Varun is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Irvine.

 

Connor Becnel (MS 2022)
Connor Becnel received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from LSU and an MS degree through the Accelerated MS program. He worked on a tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy system to acquire temperature readings of high temperature sources. His research focused on use of the TDLAS system to characterize combustion processes in hybrid rocket engines using a model combustor setup. Connor is currrently an engineer at Bascom-Hunter.

 

Mohana Gurunadhan (PhD 2024, Dr. Menon was a minor advisor)
Mohana completed his Doctoral Degree in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on numerical simulations of hybrid rocket combustion. He received his Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from LSU and his BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Anna University. He is currently employed by Ansys-Fluent.

Undergraduate Researchers

Eddie Veal (BS 2019, ME; Project Manager / Rotating Engineering Assurance Team Lead at Shell)

Vaibhav Rajora (BS 2019, Physics; PhD Student in Aerospace Engineering at Purdue)

Wei Zhao (BS 2019, ME; Maintenance engineer at Syngenta)

Sabrina Huezo (Physics)

James Szeszycki (BS 2019, ME; Specialist Sr., Planned Maintenance Systems at Carnival Cruise Line)

Laura Broadbridge (BS 2023, ME)

Dillon Ellender (BS 2020, ME; PhD student in Aerospace Engineering at UT-Austin)

Chris Jeansonne 

Joshua Vrettos (BS 2019, ME; Dredging Field Engineer at Weeks Marine, Inc)

Amer Algalban (BS 2023, ME)

Matthew Monju

Jasmine Li (Physics)

Caitlynn Sengchiam (ME)

Current Openings

For prospective graduate students who are interested in working in the Energy & Propulsion Lab, please refer to my research interests and publications to find out about the specific research topics and email me with a copy of your resume/CV. For current graduate students at LSU who are interested in working in the Energy & Propulsion Lab, please come talk to me directly in my office at 3290 A PFTH.