Heat Transfer Physics

Massoud Kaviany is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and in the Applied Physics Program at the University of Michigan, where he has been since 1986. His area of teaching and research is heat transfer physics, with a particular interest in porous media. His current projects include atomic structural metrics in high-performance thermoelectric materials (both electron and phonon transport) and in laser cooling of solids (including ab initio calculations of photon-electron and electron-phonon couplings), and the effect of pore water in polymer electrolyte transport and fuel cell performance. His integration of research into education is currently focused on heat transfer physics, treating the atomic-level kinetics of transport and interaction of phonon, electron, fluid particle, and photon, in a unified manner. This combines ab initio (fine structure), molecular dynamics, Boltzmann transport, and macroscopic treatments, but on increasing length and time scales. He is author of the monographs Principles of Heat Transfer in Porous Media, 2nd edition, and Principles of Convective Heat Transfer, 2nd edition, and the undergraduate textbooks Principles of Heat Transfer and Essentials of Heat Transfer. He received the College of Engineering's Education Excellence Award in 2003. He is an editor of the Journal of Nanoscale and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer and several other international journals. He is an ASME Fellow (since 1992) and an APS Fellow (since 2011), was Chair of the Committee on Theory and Fundamental Research in Heat Transfer (1995–8), and is the recipient of the 2002 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award (Science) and the 2010 Harry Potter Gold Medal (Thermodynamics Science).