Principal Investigator
Youping Chen
Professor
Dr. Youping Chen is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida. Dr. Chen received her Ph.D from the Georgia Washington University in 2003 and jointed University of Florida in 2006. She was a recipient of DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2010 for “Predicting materials properties from their microstructural architecture”, DOE Early Career Award in 2011 for “Prediction of thermal transport properties of materials with microstructural complexity”, and 11 US National Science Foundation Awards for multiscale studies of mechanics of advanced materials and thermal transport in heterostructures. Six of her former Ph.D students are now university professors and two are US national laboratory scientists. For her “excellence, innovation, and effectiveness in doctoral student advising and mentoring”, Dr. Chen was selected as a Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Awardee in 2022.
Post-Doctoral Associates
Yang Li
Postdoctoral Associate
Yang’s doctoral research was focused on the PbTe/PbSe interfaces. His CAC simulations of phonon thermal transport identified local vibrational modes of misfit dislocation networks and demonstrated phonon-dislocation resonance, as well as the collective behavior of phonons, interfaces, and dislocation networks. Yang also simulated the kinetic processes of PbTe/PbSe heteroepitaxy and captured the growth modes, the critical thickness for dislocation nucleation, as well as the mechanisms for dislocation nucleation, interaction, and annihilations.
Current PhD Students
Boyang Gu
Ph.D Student
Boyang has developed a prism element to enable the CAC method to capture the nucleation, propagation and interactions of dislocations and cracks . His simulations have reproduced the central crack formation in Si micro-pillars under compression, a mesoscale phenomenon widely observed in experiments. His simulations have identified, for the first time, the mechanism underlying the size-dependent brittle-to -ductile transition: crack formation as a result of dislocation intersections.
Jiaqi Sun
Ph.D Student
Jiaqi has been working on finite-temperature CAC, heteroepitaxial growth on defected substrates, and collective behavior of dislocations, interfaces, and phonons. His work on GaN/AlN interfaces has been featured on the front cover of the Journal of Applied Physics.
Nicholas A Taormina
Ph.D student
Nick joined our group on 01/2023 as an undergraduate researcher and started his Ph.D on 08/2023. Nick’s Ph.D research aims to address the universal challenge for microelectronics and power electronics: self-heating.
Nick is a recipient of the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering Dean’s Research Award, the Kirkland Fellowship, and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship.
Emir Bilgili
Ph.D student
Emir joined our group on 01/2023 as an undergraduate researcher and as a Ph.D student on 01/2024.
John Andrew Faiella
Ph.D student
Jake joined our group on 01/2023 as an undergraduate researcher and as a PhD student on 08/2025.