Xiaozhou Fan

Xiaozhou Fan

2nd year Postdoc at Caltech GALCIT, expertise in unsteady aerodynamics, robotics, reduced-order modeling and flight control and sensing with data driven approaches

Work experience

Work experience

Postdoctoral Scholar Research Associate, Caltech Sept. 2023 – Now Advisor: Prof. Morteza Gharib (mgharib@caltech.edu); https://www.gharib.caltech.edu/

  • Sparse and dynamic flow sensing and flight control using reinforcement learning, aiming to develop safer and more robust fixed-wing drones in extreme wind gust.

  • Organizing bi-weekly AI journal club.

  • Aug. 2022 - Aug. 2023: Innovation Fellow
    • Brown Technology Innovations Office
    • Duties included: Assess the commercial potential of early-stage technologies, evaluate industry interest, develop marketing strategies, and compose technical reports and pitch documents.
    • Supervisor: Mr. Brian Demers
  • Jan. 2019 - Aug. : Research Assistant
    • Breuer Lab, in collaboration with Aeromechanics & Evolutionary Morphology Lab
    • Duties included:
      • Developed theoretical dynamical models with wing-body interaction, inertial and aerodynamic effect to predict the motion of flapping wing flight and energetics.
      • Investigated the energetics of animal flight under different flight speeds, featuring the important effect of wing camber in performance.
      • Designed and fabricated robotic flapping wing platform to study unsteady aerodynamic phenomenon, which translates to efficient, quite drone with large payload capability.
    • Supervisor: Prof. Kenneth Breuer (kbreuer@brown.edu)
  • Jan. 2016 - Dec.2017: Research Assistant
    • HPCFD Lab
    • Duties included:
      • Devised an algorithm, and ported this into the in-house N-S incompressible solver GenIDLEST, such that the bat wing at each discretized time was represented as a thin surface in the immersed boundary method (IBM) framework.
      • Devised a mathematical formulation that decomposed the highly articulated bat wing kinematics into five canonical descriptors (flapping, stroke-plane deviation, twisting, chord- and span-wise cambering), and performed CFD simulations (LES) on systemically simplified kinematics and analyzed the flow field.
    • Supervisor: Prof. Danesh Tafti (dtafti@exchange.vt.edu)
  • May. 2016– Sept. 2016, Research Assistant
    • VT-SDU lab
    • Duty included: Participation in the construction of a flight tunnel and motion capturing experiment of bats flight.
    • Supervisor: Prof. Rolf Muller (rolf.mueller@vt.edu)
  • Dec. 2011–Nov. 2013, National Undergraduate Training Programs for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, China.
    • Duty included: Designed a flapping wing mechanism that mimicked the birds’ or bats’ folding of wings during the upstroke, and completed its mathematical modelling and preliminary efficiency analysis.
    • Supervisor: Prof. Xianmin Zhang (zhangxm@scut.edu.cn),

Education

  • B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering and Automation, South China University of Technology, Guangdong, China , 2014
  • M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2016 - 2017
  • Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering, Brown University, 2019 - 2023

Honors, awards and scholarship

  • 2021 Simon Ostrach Ph.D. ’50 Endowed Fellowship.
  • 2017 – 2018 Ingersoll-Rand Fellowship, Virginia Tech
  • 2018 China Scholarship Council, Full Scholarship Support (stipend + tuition).
  • 2012 – 2013 Second Place Scholarship (Top 7 in class annual evaluation)
  • 2013 Second Prize, School Challenge Cup
  • 2013 First Prize, Provincial Mechanical Innovative Design Competition
  • 2010 – 2011 National Scholarship (Top 1 in class in annual evaluation)
  • 2011 Second Prize, National Machine Drawing and CAD Design Competition.

Teaching

  • 2020 ENGN0810, Teaching Assistant, Fluid Mechanics, With Prof. Thomas Powers, and Prof. Roberto Zenit.
  • 2020 ENGN1340, Teaching Assistant, Water Supply and Treatment Systems - Technology and Sustainability, With Dr. Indrek Kulaots.
  • 2019 CEEN0926, Teaching Assistant, Fluid Mechanics through Hovercraft Physics, with Dr. Yunxing Su

Publications