Sami Yamani Douzi Sorkhabi
PhD Candidate, Research and Teaching Assistant
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Sami Yamani Douzi Sorkhabi is currently a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is a research and teaching assistant and a recipient of the prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral Program working under the supervision of Professor Irmgard Bischofberger and Professor Gareth H. McKinley. He received his Master of Applied Science degree in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto in 2015 and his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tehran in 2013. During his bachelor and master studies, Sami carried out research on optimization of sustainable thermal and fluid energy systems such as compact heat exchangers and onshore wind turbines.
Sami’s PhD research is focused on understanding the instability rise due to viscoelasticity in the fluids and its effect of transition to turbulence. To this end, Sami uses different flow visualization techniques such as Schlieren imaging and particle image velocimetry (PIV) together with data-infused simulations (performed by collaborators at Johns Hopkins University). Understanding the unique spatio-temporal features of the viscoelastic turbulent flows is critical in a variety of industrial and commercial applications such as drag reduction in pipe flows or around marine vehicles. In addition to his technical work, Sami has a passion for teaching and has been involved with teaching several undergraduate and graduate level classes at MIT and other universities as a teaching assistant or instructor.
Sami’s research interests include studying a wide range of fluid mechanics, heat transfer, and rheological phenomena both fundamentally and for specific engineering applications. Specifically, he is interested in studying instabilities and turbulence in flows of Non-Newtonian fluid flows, rheological propoerties of Non-Newtonian fluids and their impact on instabilities and turbulence, capillarity and interfacial phenomena, turbulent mixing and heat transfer, and optimization of thermal and fluid systems.