Taher recently presented his research on bulk nanobubble zeta potentials to the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering Research Conference, on 10th April 2026. The conference provided a challenging format of condensing the research into a two-minute/two-slide presentation, followed by a poster session. Taher presented a confident overview of his work, which was reflected in his poster receiving a lot of attention in the following sessions.

Christiana Antonopoulou won the best presentation prize for her session at the Mechanical Engineering MEng conference day on 24 April 2026, for her project on interfacial thermal transport. Angus Stainton finished as runner-up in his session for his project on vibration-assisted freeze desalination. Both are final-year MEng students supervised by Rohit.

The mfX group exhibited “When Bubbles Bite” at the Edinburgh Science Festival in Dynamic Earth from 10-13 April 2026. Over four days, Rohit and Duncan led a team that burst over 200 balloons underwater to demonstrate cavitation physics to kids aged 1 to 16 and their families. Visitors controlled mini propellers to create cavitation in real time, inspected erosion damage on a real ship propeller, and tested their knowledge on our interactive quiz app.

Thanks to all the mfX members and volunteers who helped run the stand: Jacqui, Brian, Tushar, Abhinav, Yuanye, Taher, Rachel, Janice, Clara, and our mechanised assistant Chonky Walter.

Pengxu Chen was invited by ARCHER2 to write a case study on our research into using surface vibrations to control ice nucleation for freeze desalination.

Duncan recently presented his research on nanobubble modelling with Molecular Dynamics simulations at the ARCHER2 webinar series. In case you missed it, the full webinar is available to watch on YouTube.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Yuanye Zhou into mfX. Yuanye joins us as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate, working with Livio on machine learning and crowd dynamics. Welcome Yuanye!

We are delighted to welcome Zhaolun Li into mfX. Zhaolun joins us as a PhD student, having completed his MSc at TU Delft. He will be developing machine learning potentials for studying thermal problems at solid-liquid interfaces. Welcome Zhaolun!

Congratulations to Pengxu Chen who won the Early Career category in the ARCHER2 Image Competition 2025!

His winning entry, “Ice is born in vibrating nanopores”, visualises ice nucleation in supercooled water confined within a nanopore with a vibrating wall. The molecular dynamics simulations were performed using LAMMPS on ARCHER2.

Congratulations to Abdullah El-Rifai, Sarah Davidson, Yichong Chen, and Shaokang Li who all graduated with their PhDs on 9 July 2025!

We wish them all the best in their future careers!

Our group has been at hard at work, with four new papers published in the last month!

Pengxu published his first PhD paper on resolving the mechanisms of acoustic-wave-induced ice nucleation in Nanoscale, along with Rohit and Saikat.

Abdullah published his second PhD paper in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics on spectral mechanisms for heat transfer in solid/liquid interfaces, in the presence of a liquid-vapour meniscus, with Rohit and Sree Hari.

Patrick publsihed his third paper on surface roughness effects on heterogeneous vapour bubble nucleation in Journal of Chemical Physics, along with Rohit and Duncan.

And finally, Duncan published his most recent work in Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, investigating ionic adsorption on bulk nanobubbles, questioning one of the leading theories for nanobubble stability, with Patrick and Livio.

Stay tuned for more research articles, exploring the beyond the limits of classical thermodynamic understanding in multiscale fluids!

We are delighted to announce that Shaokang Li passed his PhD viva with minor corrections! His work concerns molecular kinetic modelling of non-equilibrium evaporating flows at liquid-vapour interfaces.

Congratulations again to Dr Shaokang Li, who will be joining Prof. Yonghao Zhang in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.

We have been busy! We are pleased to announce three new publications in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C (Abdullah, Sree Hari, and Rohit), Physical Review E (Yichong and Livio), and Nano Letters (Saikat and Rohit)!

These research projects each employ high-fidelity Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations to explore non-trivial non-equilibrium phenomena, which would not be possible with more conventional continuum-based modelling. Stay tuned for more papers on the way!

We are delighted to announce that Sarah Davidson passed her PhD viva with minor corrections! Her thesis: Mesoscopic Modelling of Membrane-Fluid Interactions using Peridynamics: Application to Deformable and Fracturing Beams modelled the action of 2D bicuspid valves, in veins of the leg, using a coupled Peridynamics (PD), Immersed Boundary (IB), and cascaded lattice Boltzmann method (CLBM), and investigated the adverse resulting flow conditions with damaged and aging valve tissue.

Congratulations again to Dr Sarah Davidson, and we wish her all the best for the future!

We are delighted to welcome Thejas Hulikal Chakrapani and Taher Meydando into mfX. Thejas joins us as a PDRA investigating heat transfer at solid-fluid interfaces, having completed his PhD at the University of Twente. Taher joins us a 1st year PhD student, and will perform MD simulations of nanobubble cavitation under electric fields. We look forward to working with them both, and excited to see how they progress!

Sreehari has been successfully appointed as Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras! Congratulations to Sreehari!

Abdullah passed his PhD viva today with minor corrections! That’s two in quick succession. Congratulations are in order to Dr. Abdullah El-Rifai.

Yichong passed his PhD viva today with minor corrections! Congratulations are in order to Dr. Yichong Chen.

Congratulations to Carlos Corral-Casas who finished joint runner-up in the UK Fluids Network Thesis Competition for 2024! This is a commendable achievement given that this was a UK-wide competition in all things fluid mechanics.

Abdullah also has obtained a position in the Faculty AI Fellowship program for 2024! He starts in October 2024.

Saikat has ben successfully appointed as Senior Lecturer at Swansea University! Congratulations to Saikat, and he will commence his new role in January 2025 at the end of his Fellowship.

Pengxu won the award for Best Poster at the School of Engineering PGR Conference 2024, at the University of Edinburgh in April, keeping up our research group’s strong track record for winning awards at this conference since 2018!

Abdullah’s work on interfacial thermal conductance between solids and liquids has been published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C! Congratulations to Abdullah for the first publication of his PhD.

Patrick and Duncan have been featured in an article on the university website, link here!

Shaokang’s work on inertio-thermal vapour bubble modelling has been published in JFM! Congratulations to Shaokang for the first publication of his PhD.

Carlos passed his PhD viva today with no corrections! Congratulations are in order to Dr. Carlos Corral-Casas.

Saikat has won his first grant as PI, a £50,000 HPC grant to run ice nucleation simulations on CIRRUS, along with Pengxu.

Patrick passed his PhD viva today with minor corrections! Congratulations are in order to Dr. Patrick Sullivan.

Patrick’s work on inertio-thermal vapour bubble modelling has been published in JFM! Congratulations to Patrick for the first publication of his PhD.

Pengxu Chen has joined mfX as a PhD Student, and will be working with Saikat and Rohit on understanding nanoscale acoustofluidics. Welcome Pengxu!

Duncan has won the highly-prestigious 5-year RAEng Research Fellowship for his proposal on using bulk nanobubbles for water disinfection Congratulations to Duncan, the full announcement by RAEng is here.

Carlos’s work on disappearance of Knudsen mimimum in confined flows has been published in JFM! Congratulations to Carlos for his second PhD publication.

Sritay passed his PhD viva today with minor corrections! Congratulations are in order to Dr. Sritay Mistry.

Yichong’s work on scattering kernels for kerogen has been published in Fuel! Congratulations to Yichong for the first publication of his PhD.

Sina is promoted to Senior Lecturer. Congratulations, Sina!

Martin’s recent work on seeded MD of surface icing has been published in Journal of Chemical Physics, and a separate book chapter by Springer Press! Congratulations to Martin, and you can see his paper here, and book chapter at this link.

Sritay’s recent work on boron nitride and carbon nanotube modelling has been published in Nanoscale! Congratulations to Sritay, and you can see his paper here.

Giorgos Tatsios has joined mfX as a PDRA, and will be working with Matthew and Livio on their new EPSRC project. Welcome Giorgos!

Carlos’s recent paper in Physics of Fluids has been higlighted as Editor’s pick! Congratulations to Carlos, and you can read his paper here.

Shaokang Li has joined mfX as a PhD student, to work with Professor Yonghao Zhang. Welcome Shaokang!

Martin passed his PhD viva today with minor corrections! Congratulations are in order to Dr. Martin Nikiforidis.

Saikat and Sreehari have both won Early Career Fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust! These prestigious fellowships are awarded across the sciences, arts, and the humanities. Huge congratulations to the duo!

Patrick won the Best Poster prize at the School PGR conference today in a strong field of 200+ candidates! A well-deserved congratulations to Patrick!

mfX welcomes two new PhD students, Yichong Chen and Abdullah El-Rifai, who will be working with Matthew and Rohit, respectively. Welcome Yichong and Abdullah!

Sreehari’s paper on the molecular physics of jumping nanodroplets amade the front cover of Nanoscale. Congratulations to Sreehari and Matthew!

Professor Yonghao Zhang has joined University of Edinburgh as the inaugural Jason Reese Chair in Multiscale Fluid Mechanics, while Dr. Sina Haeri also joins as Lecturer. Welcome Yonghao and Sina to the newly-created mfX group!