# Yuwen Zhang

Yuwen Zhang is a Chinese American professor of mechanical engineering who is well known for his contributions to phase change heat transfer. He is presently a Curators' Distinguished Professor and Huber and Helen Croft Chair in Engineering in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.

## Early life and education

Yuwen Zhang was born in 1964 in Xiaoyi, Shanxi, China and spent his early life there until 1981 when he graduated from Chengguan High School and was admitted to college. He earned his B.E. degree in thermal turbomachinery, M.E. and D.Eng. degrees in engineering thermophysics from Xi'an Jiaotong University, in 1985, 1988 and 1991, respectively. He received a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1998.

## Career

He taught at Xi'an Jiaotong University from 1991 to 1994 and was a research associate at Wright State University (1994-1995) and University of Connecticut (1995-1996). He was a research scientist at University of Connecticut (1999-2000) and a senior engineer at Thermoflow, Inc. (2000) before joining the Department of Mechanical Engineering at New Mexico State University as an assistant professor in 2001. He joined the faculty at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri (MU) in 2003 as an associate professor and became a full professor in 2009. He was awarded a James C. Dowell Professorship in 2012 and served as the Department Chair from 2013 to 2017. He was named a Curators' Distinguished Professor in 2020 and a Huber and Helen Croft Chair in Engineering in 2021.

## Technical contributions

Yuwen Zhang's research area is in the field of heat and mass transfer with applications in nanomanufacturing, thermal management, and energy storage and conversion. He has published over 300 journal papers and more than 180 conference publications at national and international conferences.
He has developed pioneer models for a latent heat thermal energy storage system, as well as multiscale, multiphysics models on additive manufacturing (AM), including selective laser sintering (SLS) and laser chemical vapor deposition/infiltration (LCVD/LCVI). He is the first to develop fundamental models of fluid flow and heat transfer in the oscillating heat pipes, which is a heat transfer device that can be used in thermal management of electronic devices and energy systems. He carried out theoretical studies on femtosecond laser interaction with metal and biological materials from molecular scales to system levels, and solved inverse heat transfer problems for the determination of the heating condition and/or temperature-dependent macro and micro thermophysical properties under uncertainty. He also investigated the mechanism of heat transfer enhancement in nanofluids, which are stable colloidal suspensions of solid nanomaterials with sizes typically on the order of 1-100 nm in the base fluid, via molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.
Thermal management and temperature uniformity improvement of Li-ion batteries using external and internal cooling methods were also systematically studied by utilizing pin fin heat-sinks and metal/non-metal foams, as well as using electrolyte flow inside the embedded microchannels in the porous electrodes as a novel internal cooling technique. Moreover, he has pioneered application of AI and machine learning for efficient and accurate solution of multiphase heat and mass transfer and inverse heat conduction problems.

## Honors and awards

* Fellow, American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers (ASTFE), 2024
* Huber and Helen Croft Chair in Engineering, University of Missouri, 2021
* Curators' Distinguished Professor, University of Missouri, 2020
* Coulter Award, University of Missouri Coulter Translational Partnership Program, 2018
* Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), 2015
* James C. Dowell Professorship, University of Missouri, 2012
* Certificate of Appreciation for Service as K-15 Committee Chair, ASME Heat Transfer Division, 2014
* Certificate of Distinguished Service, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), 2011
* Missouri Honor Senior Faculty Research Award, College of Engineering at the University of Missouri, 2010
* Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity, University of Missouri, 2010
* Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2007
* Associate Fellow of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), 2008
* Faculty Fellow Award, College of Engineering at University of Missouri, 2007
* Computational Research Award, Department of Mechanical Engineering, New Mexico State University, 2003
* Young Investigator Award, Office of Naval Research (one of 26 awarded nationally in all fields), 2002