Dr. Xili Duan

Dr. Xili Duan is a Professor and Deputy Head (Graduate Studies) in mechanical engineering at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. Prof. Duan received his PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Manitoba in 2009. He then went to MIT and worked in the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department as a postdoctoral fellow. Dr. Duan also holds a Bachelor's degree in thermal energy and power engineering, and a Master degree in chemical process machinery, both from the China University of Petroleum (UPC). Before joining Memorial's Faculty of Engineering, Dr. Duan worked with Siemens Energy as a gas turbine combustion testing and design engineer. His faculty profile can be found here:
http://www.mun.ca/engineering/about/people/xiliduan.php

Dr. Duan’s research interests include interfacial fluid mechanics and heat transfer, with applications in energy conversion and storage, thermal management, drag reduction, and protection of engineering structures in harsh marine environments. He has made significant research contributions, including three book chapters and over 150 journal and conference papers.

Dr. Duan's work was recognized with several scholarships and awards including the Dean’s Award for Research, and the 2019 Terra Nova Young Innovator Award. Dr. Duan is a registered Professional Engineer in Canada and a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) and was chair of the CSME Technical Committee on Advanced Energy Systems.

Seyed Shahram Khalilinezhad
supervisors: Dr. X. Duan

Towards his PhD thesis, Shahram is developing superhydrophobic antifouling coatings for reducing frictional drag in marine vessels. He has chemical engineering background with a solid track record of research in the porous media flow of complex fluids, microfluidics, and compositional modeling. More details about this research can be found here .

Anthony Abhulimen
supervisor: Dr. K. Pope, Dr. X. Duan

Anthony is a PhD student working on the frequency-domain analysis of floating wind turbines integrated with mooring systems. His research focuses on the linearized coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic modelling of the entire system under stochastic wind and wave loading.

Nader Afshar
supervisors: Dr. Y. Muzychka, Dr. X. Duan

Nader is a Ph.D. student at Memorial University researching surface superhydrophobicity and heat transfer with micro-patterned surfaces. He has ten years of experience in the Oil and Gas industries. He also has several years of experience teaching software such as ANSYS Fluent and Matlab.

Syed Muhammad Ammar
supervisors: Dr. X. Duan, Dr. G.F. Naterer

Ammar is currently doing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering focusing on the heat recovery from molten materials in hydrogen production. He did a Master of Engineering program in Mechanical Engineering from South Korea where he worked on heat transfer projects related to vapor compression refrigeration system. He completed his undergraduate program at UET in Pakistan.

Shiruo Han
supervisors: Dr. X. Duan, Dr. K. Pope

Shiruo is a PhD student working on developing numerical models to investigate heat transfer around high temperature pipelines with advanced coating and insulation materials.

Benedict Obalum
supervisors: Dr. X. Duan, Dr. K. Pope

Benedict Obalum is a master's research student with interest in thermal systems, heat transfer, and applied energy research. His work focuses on the experimental investigation of high-temperature industrial insulation systems, combining lab-scale testing, thermal measurements, and data analysis to better understand heat loss and material performance under realistic operating conditions. He is also interested in translating engineering research into practical, scalable solutions, with complementary experience in entrepreneurship and innovation training.

Dan McLean
supervisors: Dr. X. Duan, Dr. K. Pope

Dan is a recent Master of Applied Science graduate from Concordia University in Montreal, where his research concerned the simulation of a novel vertical-axis styled wind turbine using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). During his time as a Master's student, he also spent four months as a research assistant at the Technical University of Munich's Wind Energy Institute, contributing to the development of a high-fidelity CFD model of a scaled wind farm facility. Under the supervision of Dr. Xili Duan and Dr. Kevin Pope, Dan's PhD at Memorial will focus on the development of a wind-powered thermal energy device.