Team

Darshan G Pahinkar

Principal Investigator

Darshan is the principal investigator of AETL and an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical and Civil Engineering Department at Florida Tech. Before joining Florida Tech, he was a post-doctoral fellow in Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and led research in interface materials for electronic packaging and materials of neuromorphic computing. He received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in the Fall of 2016, specializing in gas separation systems. He received his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the Government College of Engineering, Pune, India, in 2006 and his M.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 2009, focusing on Thermal and Fluids. He was a manager (Development) at Tata Motors Engineering Research Center, Pune, between 2009 and 2011.

 

 

Faraz Ege

Ph.D. Student (Summer 2021 – Present)

Faraz received his bachelor's degree from the Urmia University of Iran and his Master's degree from The Gazi University of Turkey, both in mechanical engineering. During his MSc program, he researched the simulation of heat transfer in microchannels using nanofluids. He also has more than seven years of experience as an HVAC systems design engineer in industrial projects in Turkey. He started his Ph.D. at Florida Tech in the Summer of 2021, and his research focuses on enhancing adsorption-based HVAC system performance through microchannel technology, advanced coating technologies for adsorbents, and adsorbent performance assessment and characterization.  

 

Mary Sharon Rose Bondugula

Ph.D. Student (Summer 2022 – Present)

Sharon graduated with a Bachelor of Technology in Aerospace Engineering from Karunya Institute of Technology & Sciences, India and a Master of Science in Space Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. During her bachelor's and master's programs, she worked on ignition delay studies of hydrocarbon fuels using shock tubes and hydrogen-based green propellants for future space propulsion applications. Her interest in propulsion led her to publish four papers in the electric and chemical propulsion domain. She worked with the space business operations department of DZH Dynamics in Spain and as a project analyst in Milan, Italy. Not afraid to take risks, she decided to change tracks and pursue her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Florida Tech, working on thermal energy and fluid flow. She will explore novel carbon dioxide capture technologies using adsorption and demonstrate their operation using computational and experimental techniques.

 

Daniel Hocheimy

M.S. Student (Spring 2023 – Present)

Daniel graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Nanotechnology from Florida Tech in May 2019. He then went on to work for three years in the fields of MEP Engineerin and Custom Machine Design: Designing numerous HVAC, Electrical and piping layout plans for commercial, industrial and residential buildings and contributing to various custom machine design projects such as Manatee lifts, Spring loaded gangways, dive barges and many others. He returned to Florida Tech in August 2022 to pursue an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Thermal and Fluid Sciences and intensely looks forward to contributing to AETL.

 

 

 

Animesh Kumar Vyas

M.S. Student (Fall 2021 – Present)

Animesh is currently pursuing a Master of Science (Research) at IIT Kanpur and is co-advised by Prof. Vaibhav Arghode in the Department of Sustainable Energy Engineering. His research with AETL focuses on developing a high-performance adsorption-based energy storage system. He completed his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the Heritage Institute of Technology in Kolkata.

 

Kapil Sharma

M.S. Student (Fall 2021 – Present)

Kapil is currently pursuing a Master of Science (Research) at IIT Kanpur and is co-advised by Prof. Vaibhav Arghode in the Department of Sustainable Energy Engineering. His research with AETL focuses on the Development and Optimization of Heat Driven Dehumidification Systems. He completed his B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Chitkara University and has industry experience working as Maintenance Engineer at Deepak Nitrite Ltd.

 

Juan Sebastián Rodríguez Páez

M.S. Student (Spring 2023 – Present)

 Juan received his BS in Chemical Engineering (January 2018 - December 2021) and BS in Physics (August 2018 - May 2022 ) from Universidad de los Andes. His passion is to understand how chemical engineering and physics coexist using mathematics as a language to try to explain the mysteries of the universe and its behaviour.  He loves beer processing when not working. Juan is  currently pursuing MS in Chemical Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology, where his focus is on thermal simulation of human heart transplant process using COMSOL Multiphysics. 

 

Kaleem Bocus

B.S. Student (Fall 2023 – Present)

Kaleem is currently pursuing a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with an expected graduation date in December 2026. He is  CAPE scholarship winner from Trinidad and Tobago. He enjoys learning new skills and socialising.

 

 

 

Emmy Stevens

B.S. Student (Spring 2024 – Present)

Emmy is a sophomore/junior in Mechanical Engineering and will be graduating in Spring of 2025.  She has been accepted to fast track her Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering and will graduate with her Master’s Degree in Spring of 2026.  She hopes to work in the theme park industry as an engineer and designer in the future.  She is excited to learn new skills and gain hands-on experience in the lab that can eventually help in the industry.

 

 

Alumni

Chidinma Imediegwu

Ph.D. Student (Spring 2021 – Fall  2023)

Chidinma Imediegwu graduated with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in Fall 2023 from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta and was co-advised by Dr. Samuel Graham, who is at the University of Maryland. She obtained her bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2013 and a Master's degree in 2015 from Southern University, Baton Rouge. Her NASA-funded Master's research explored Shape Memory Polymer Composites and Carbon Nanotechnology designed for Aerospace Systems. Her doctoral research examines bonding various power electronic substrates, including Aluminum Nitride (AlN) and Direct Bonded Copper (DBC) to Aluminum Silicon Carbide (AlSiC) heat sinks through transient liquid phase bonding using a Copper-Aluminum binary system. This research addresses the thermal and reliability issues of power electronic devices by eliminating interface layers with low thermo-mechanical performance, reducing the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch between materials, and introducing cooling enhancement features closer to the heat source. She is the current president of the Georgia Tech Student Chapter of SMTA, former Engineering Council Representative for NSBE, Golden Oaks Award winner, Charles Hutchins Educational Grant winner and two-time recipient of the UIU International Scholar Award.

Nitish Chauhan

M.S. Student  (Fall 2021 – Fall 2023)

Nitish graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Florida Tech in the Spring of 2020. He is proficient in Engineering design, 3-D modeling and simulations and project management. He was the Propulsion Engineer for the Peregrine 2 Project, where he developed and designed the fuel tank and fuel line setup for the smooth flow of jet fuel. He also designed and constructed an engine test stand and experiments to determine the aerodynamic forces. Previously he worked as Junior Project Engineer at a Stone Crusher in India, where his work was setting up and maintaining jaw crusher machines. At AETL, his work involves developing new coating techniques for high-performance adsorbents, rheology of adsorbent slurries and concomitant model development. 

 

Nicolas Lohay

B.S. Student (Summer 2021)

Nic graduated with B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in August 2021 and is now pursuing M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at UCF. He worked on developing new adsorbent coating techniques for monolithic substrates.