Biography:
Sadaf Sobhani is an assistant professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Mechanical Engineering department at Stanford University (BS ’14, MS ’15, PhD ’20). In her PhD, she combined computational modeling and experimentation of porous media combustion with the burgeoning field of additive manufacturing to create 3D printed porous burners. This technology enables tuning of combustion dynamics by embedding a flame in a carefully architected porous structure. During her PhD, she also worked as a research associate at the NASA Ames Research Center, where she combined high-fidelity simulations with x-ray tomography to study radiative heat transfer in thermal protection fibrous materials. After completing her Ph.D., she continued her research of multi-physics flows in complex geometries as a postdoctoral scholar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She then joined the Cornell faculty in July of 2020, focusing her lab’s research activities on reacting flows in porous media and ceramic additive manufacturing for combustion applications, with the goal of impacting innovations in high-efficiency, low-emission, and robust energy and propulsion systems. She is currently an active member of Interpore, AIAA, ASME, and Combustion Institute.
Vision Statement:
If I am elected to serve on the ESSCI Executive Board, I look forward to working harmoniously with other board members to serve the needs of our community, support and strengthen efforts to increase its diversity, and formalize mentorship opportunities for our early career researchers. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are of paramount importance to our organization. Starting from the first semester of my professorship, I worked to organize the Women in Combustion event at the US National Combustion Meeting. As a previous student participant and faculty organizer of these events, I am eager to leverage my prior experiences to lead a broader effort towards promoting diversity in the combustion community as a member of the ESSCI board. Towards this goal, I will work to increase participation of diverse researchers in the Combustion Institute, such as providing opportunities for underrepresented university students to attend CI meetings. Furthermore, as a strong advocate for early career researchers, including graduate students and post-docs, I aim to design and launch a community mentoring program. Balancing structure and simplicity, this program would support both peer-mentorship as well as establish connections to senior researchers.
I would be honored to serve the ESSCI as a board member and to work towards meeting our goals of maintaining and strengthening a diverse, supportive and productive community.