Hector Gomez
Purdue University, IN·Engineering
Fluids moving through complex spaces, such as water around a ship propeller or blood through tiny vessels, are hard to predict because flow, pressure and transport interact in complicated ways. The lab builds computational models, combined in one project with artificial intelligence and in another with imaging data, to understand and control such flows.
- Fields
Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
cavitation
multiphase flow
turbulence
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Model how vapor bubbles form and evolve in turbulent liquids using high-fidelity simulations based on first-principles thermodynamics, generating data linking fluid motion to cavitation events.
- Use explainable deep learning to identify which turbulent flow structures most strongly cause cavitation onset, establishing cause-and-effect links between turbulence and bubble formation.
- Develop deep reinforcement learning controllers that act on the flow in real time, targeting the structures responsible for cavitation in order to suppress it.
- Develop a diffuse-domain computational model, which handles complex vessel shapes, integrated with in vivo imaging to simulate 3D blood flow and oxygen transport in remodeling microvascular networks.
- Determine how flow across and outside vessel walls and oxygen transport control microvessel growth, shrinkage and pruning.
More about the research
One project studies vapor bubbles in turbulent liquids, and the other studies blood flow and oxygen delivery in the smallest blood vessels.
Why it matters
Better cavitation prediction and control could make ship propellers, water turbines, medical ultrasound and drug delivery devices safer, more efficient and longer-lasting. Understanding how blood flow and oxygen delivery shape tiny vessels could inform wound healing strategies, tissue engineering, artificial organs, drug delivery and organoid development.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Olivier Coutier-Delgosha
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Engineering
Measure how the repeated growth and collapse of cavitation bubbles weakens and ruptures the surfactant film around water droplets in oil, using high-speed visualization of ultrasound-driven emulsions.
Ivan Bermejo-Moreno
University of Southern California, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Characterize how compression waves amplify the length and time scales of separated turbulent flow over thin flexible panels, using high-fidelity coupled fluid-structure simulations.
Pouya Rezai
George Mason University, VA·Engineering
Relate the composition and structure of bio-imprinted superabsorbent polymers (BioISAPs) to their swelling and fluid-transport behavior through systematic synthesis and characterization.
The school
Purdue University: 43 labs on PI Pages, $932M a year on research, 833 research doctorates a year.
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