James McDonald

James McDonald serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Ottawa. He joined the university in July 2013 after working at the Centre for Computational Engineering Science at RWTH Aachen, Germany (2010-2013), where he developed advanced models for non-equilibrium gas flows.

His academic credentials include:

• Ph.D. in Aerospace Studies from the University of Toronto
• M.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto
• B.Eng. from Dalhousie University

Professor McDonald specializes in non-equilibrium gas flows, micro-scale fluid dynamics, and computational fluid dynamics. His research develops novel moment-closure models using maximum-entropy methods to solve flows where Navier-Stokes equations fail, with applications spanning rarefied gas dynamics, plasma physics, multi-phase systems, and radiation modeling. His work enables accurate simulation of hypersonic, micro-scale, and highly rarefied flows.

Analysis of his recent publications (2020-2025) reveals a consistent focus on extending moment-closure techniques to diverse non-equilibrium flow regimes. Key advancements include globally hyperbolic closures using orthogonal polynomials, applications to plasma discharges and multiphase flows, and solutions for relativistic gases. His research consistently addresses realizability and numerical stability challenges in complex flow simulations.