I direct the Niemeyer Research Group.
My lab primarily includes students from the Mechanical Engineering program in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, and occasionally other units on campus.
Current Oregon State Ph.D. student?
Email me about your interests.
I'm always open to chatting, collaborating, serving on committees, and when I have capacity, advising.
You're also welcome to visit any of our lab meetings.
Future Oregon State Ph.D. student?
Read our recent publications to ensure we share interests.
Don't write me to ask if I'm admitting students in the coming year; I'm always considering new students unless this page says otherwise.
Don't ask me to evaluate your CV; I don't have time to evaluate your application twice; do write if you have specific questions about my lab's recent research.
See the School of MIME graduate admissions page for more information.
Current Advisees
Diba Behnoudfar
phd
2020 - present
she/her
Diba is a PhD candidate studying the behavior of live fuels in wildfire. She received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology, an MS degree in Polymer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, and an MS degree in Chemical Engineering from Oregon State. Malik Jordan
phd
2020 - present
he/him
Malik is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering, looking at methods to reduce and optimize biogeochemical models for simulations of the upper ocean. As an undergraduate at Arizona State University, he conducted research as a scholar in the Ronald E. McNair Achievement program. Joanna Morgan
phd
2020 - present
she/her
Joanna is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Nuclear Engineering, working on methods to simulate neutron transport using Monte Carlo methods. She has completed multiple research internships at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Jacob Adams
phd
2023 - present
he/him
Jacob is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering, studying and modeling the behavior of cryogenic propellants in space-based tanks for NASA. He recieved his BS in Mechanical Engineering from LeTourneau University. Ali Martz
masters
2022 - present
she/her
Ali is an MS student in Mechanical Engineering, studying methods to design sustainable jet fuel blends coupled with machine learning models for predicting thermophysical properties. She completed her Honors BS in Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State. Michelle Gee
masters
2023 - present
she/her
Michelle is an MS student in the NRG and CIRE labs. She researches combustion modeling for live vegetative fuels. Adam Kerr
masters
2024 - present
he/him
Adam is a MS student in Mechanical Engineering, working on developing a modeling tool for predicting draft in wood heater systems. He recieved his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University in 2021. Affiliated Ph.D. students
Collaborators
This isn't a complete list of collaborators, just those I've gotten around to adding.
Todd S. Palmer
faculty
2020 - present
he/him
Todd is Distinguished Professor in the School of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Oregon State University. His research interests include numerical techniques for radiation transport and diffusion, reactor physics, general numerical methods, Monte Carlo methods, and radiation transport in stochastic mixtures. Raymond L. Speth
researcher
2020 - present
he/him
Ray Speth is Associate Director and Research Scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment (LAE), and lead developer of Cantera. Vi Rapp
researcher
2018 - present
she/her
Vi is Research Scientist and Department Deputy in the Building & Industrial Applications Department at LBL, where she leads and directs research on zero and low-carbon heat and power generation technologies. She and Kyle have collaborated on projects using machine learning to predict properties of jet fuels and design new bio-based fuels, and first met at the Princeton Combustion Summer School in 2010. Peter Hamlington
faculty
2018 - present
he/him
Peter is Associate Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering at CU Boulder, where his group is focused on understanding and modeling turbulent flows in both engineering and geophysical problems using large eddy and direct numerical simulations. Guillaume Blanquart
faculty
2017 - present
he/him
Guillaume is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Caltech, leading a group focused on modeling the interactions between combustion processes and turbulent flows. Richard West
faculty
2017 - present
he/him
Richard is Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northeastern, where he leads a group focused on developing detailed microkinetic models for complex reacting systems, like combustion, heterogeneous catalysis, and bio-fuel processing. David Blunck
faculty
2014 - present
he/him
David Blunck is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State, and his research focuses on experimental measurements of combustion, ignition, radiation, and energy. Kyle has collaborated with him on multiple grants and projects. Christopher Hagen
faculty
2013 - present
he/him
Chris Hagen is Professor of Energy Systems Engineering at Oregon State University Cascades, and his research focuses on energy conversion (primarily combustion), novel transportation fuels, and development of sensors for harsh environments. Bryan Weber
faculty
2010 - 2022
he/him
Bryan was a faculty member at the University of Connecticut, and collaborated with Kyle on multiple projects, including creating the ChemKED standard, and he is also a major contributor to Cantera. (Bryan and Kyle first met as undergrads around 2005, and went to grad school together.) He now works as a software engineer in industry. Chih-Jen Sung
faculty
2009 - present
he/him
Chih-Jen (Jackie) Sung, Connecticut Clean Energy Fund Professor in Sustainable Energy at the University of Connecticut, is Kyle's PhD advisor and continuing collaborator. Former Ph.D. students
Anthony S. Walker
phd
2018 - 2024
he/him
Anthony received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering, focusing on preconditioning strategies to improve numerics of chemical kinetics integration. W. Jayani Jayasuriya
phd
2017 - 2022
she/her
Jayani received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering, with a research focus on smoldering combustion. She is now an Assistant Professor of Teaching in Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State University. Aaron J. Fillo
phd
2015 - 2019
he/him
AJ received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering, studing multicomponent mass transport in direct numerical simulations of turbulent flames. He received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. He now works as a combustion engineer at Arbor. Shane Daly
phd
2013 - 2018
he/him
Shane completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering, working with Chris Hagen on designing fuels for low-temperature combustion engines. While an MS student, coadvised by Kyle, he focused on correlating infrared spectroscopic measurements of fuels with their performance in low-temperature combustion engines. Former affiliated Ph.D. students
Nicholas Curtis
phd
2017 - 2022
he/him
Nick Curtis was a PhD student working with Jackie Sung at UConn, and now works as a research engineer at AMD. His doctoral work focused on GPU-based and parallel integration of chemistry. Former M.S. students
Taylor Coddington
masters
2021 - 2023
he/him
Taylor was an MS student in Mechanical Engineering, studying numerical methods to capture strong shock waves. He completed a BS in Nuclear Engineering in 2016, and also works as a Thermal Hydraulic Engineer at NuScale. Jordan Peters
masters
2021 - 2023
he/him
Jordan completed his MS student in Mechanical Engineering, studying soot formation and growth using a GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo scheme coupled with gas-phase chemical kinetics. He received his BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State. James Stark
masters
2020 - 2021
he/him
James completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying numerical methods for capturing shock waves in aerodynamics applications. Paige Lorson
masters
2018 - 2021
she/her
Paige completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying algorithms for simulating formation of soot particles on GPUs for combustion applications. Emily Klee
masters
2018 - 2020
she/her
Emily completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering, and her research focused on reducing ocean biogeochemical models using methods developed for combustion. Morgan Mayer
masters
2017 - 2021
she/her
Morgan completed MS in Mechanical Engineering, working on using machine learning methods to predict fuel properties from infrared spectroscopy. She also completed her Honors BS in Chemical Engineering with the group, collecting and standardizing experimental combustion data for validating and improving chemical kinetic models. Khang Tran
masters
2017 - 2019
he/him
Khang completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering, co-advised with Chris Hagen, studying pre-ignition behavior in compression-ignition engines. Andrew T. Alferman
masters
2016 - 2018
he/him
Andrew completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying metrics for quantifying stiffness in chemical kinetics. Tejas C. Mulky
masters
2016 - 2018
he/him
Tejas completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying smoldering combustion using computational modeling. Miguel Soler
masters
2016 - 2017
he/him
Miguel completed MS in Mechanical Engineering, whose research focused on an approach to detect electrical arc locations in vacuum remelting furances, and also the role of arc location on mixing in the liquid metal pool in the ingot forming in such furnaces. Matt Zaiger
masters
2016 - 2019
he/him
Matt completed MS in Mechanical Engineering, working on modeling of detonations and magnetohydrodynamics, focusing on the interactions between ionization chemistry and combustion chemistry. Luz Pacheco
masters
2016 - 2018
she/her
Luz completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying turbulence-chemistry interactions in the ocean. Dan Magee
masters
2016 - 2018
he/him
Dan completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying numerical methods to improve the efficiency of computational fluid dynamics simulations, specifically using graphics processing units and novel domain decomposition schemes. Himakar Ganti
masters
2015 - 2017
he/him
Himakar completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering, and worked on modeling of internal combustion engines and developing metrics for quantifying stiffness in chemical kinetics. Chris Minar
masters
2014 - 2016
he/him
Chris was the group's first graduate student, receiving his MS in Mechanical Engineering. His research looked at immersed boundary methods for simulating fluid-structure interaction using GPUs. Former undergraduate students
Katherine Bronstein
undergrad
2020 - 2021
she/her
Katherine is an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering student, who worked with the group on improving the pyMARS software for chemical kinetic model reduction. Brittany Blanksma-Stark
undergrad
2019 - 2020
she/her
Brittany was an undergraduate researcher, working on a Python-based solver for modeling soot formation in combustion. She was also President of the Oregon State AIAA student club, and team lead for the NASA USLI project. Cailin Moore
undergrad
2019 - 2021
she/her
Cailin was an Honors student who received her BS in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Aerospace Engineering; she worked on extending the open-source pyMARS software for chemical kinetic model reduction. Maria Politi
undergrad
2018 - 2019
she/her
Maria was an undergraduate Chemical Engineering student working with the group on collecting and standardizing combustion experimental data. Phillip Mestas
undergrad
2017 - 2020
he/him
Phillip was an honors student in Computer Science, studying methods for reducing chemical kinetic models and implementing these in pyMARS. Kenny Warren
undergrad
2016 - 2017
he/him
Kenny was an undergraduate student in the BioResource Research/Bioenergy program studying smoldering combustion. Parker Clayton
undergrad
2016 - 2017
he/him
Parker was an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering student, who worked on developing a Python-based software package for reducing chemical kinetic models: pyMARS.