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

Photograph of Diba Behnoudfar
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Malik Jordan
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.
Photograph of Joanna Morgan
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.
Photograph of Jacob Adams
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.
Photograph of Ali Martz
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.
Photograph of Michelle Gee
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.
Photograph of Adam Kerr
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.

Photograph of Todd S. Palmer
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.
Photograph of Raymond L. Speth
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.
Photograph of Vi Rapp
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.
Photograph of Peter Hamlington
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.
Photograph of Guillaume Blanquart
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.
Photograph of Richard West
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.
Photograph of David Blunck
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.
Photograph of Christopher Hagen
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.
Photograph of Bryan Weber
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.
Photograph of Chih-Jen Sung
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

Photograph of Anthony S. Walker
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.
Photograph of W. Jayani Jayasuriya
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.
Photograph of Aaron J. Fillo
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Shane Daly
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.
📕 MS thesis

Former affiliated Ph.D. students

Photograph of Nicholas Curtis
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

Photograph of Taylor Coddington
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.
Photograph of Jordan Peters
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of James Stark
James Stark   masters   2020 - 2021
he/him
James completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying numerical methods for capturing shock waves in aerodynamics applications.
Photograph of Paige Lorson
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Emily Klee
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Morgan Mayer
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Khang Tran
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Andrew T. Alferman
Andrew T. Alferman   masters   2016 - 2018
he/him
Andrew completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying metrics for quantifying stiffness in chemical kinetics.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Tejas C. Mulky
Tejas C. Mulky   masters   2016 - 2018
he/him
Tejas completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying smoldering combustion using computational modeling.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Miguel Soler
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Matt Zaiger
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Luz Pacheco
Luz Pacheco   masters   2016 - 2018
she/her
Luz completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering, studying turbulence-chemistry interactions in the ocean.
Photograph of Dan Magee
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.
📕 MS thesis
Photograph of Himakar Ganti
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.
Photograph of Chris Minar
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.
📕 MS thesis

Former undergraduate students

Photograph of Katherine Bronstein
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.
Photograph of Brittany Blanksma-Stark
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.
Photograph of Cailin Moore
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.
Photograph of Maria Politi
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.
Photograph of Phillip Mestas
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.
Photograph of Kenny Warren
Kenny Warren   undergrad   2016 - 2017
he/him
Kenny was an undergraduate student in the BioResource Research/Bioenergy program studying smoldering combustion.
Photograph of Parker Clayton
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.

Copyright Kyle E. Niemeyer. See this site's GitHub repository to view source and provide feedback.