Jinhui Yan

Jinhui Yan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with affiliations to the Advanced Digital Sciences Center and the Computational Science and Engineering Program. He leads research in computational mechanics, focusing on fluid-structure interaction, multi-phase flows, and applications in renewable energy and additive manufacturing.

Education: Ph.D. in Structural Engineering (UC San Diego, 2016), M.S. in Engineering Mechanics (Peking University, 2012), B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Wuhan University, 2009).

Research Interests: Computational interface-coupled multi-physics, including fluid-structure interaction (FSI), multi-phase flows, and isogeometric analysis. Applications include offshore wind turbines, tidal energy systems, and metallic additive manufacturing. Notable projects involve developing high-fidelity models for process-structure-property relationships in additive manufacturing and free-surface FSI for renewable energy systems.

Awards:

• Gallagher Young Investigator Medal (2023)
• Second Place, NIST AM-Bench Challenges (2022)
• Robert M. and Mary Haythornthwaite Award (2018)
• Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students (2016)

Advising & Grants: Supervises a research group of PhD students and postdocs. Active in federal grants (NSF, DOE, Army Research Office). Organizes symposiums on CFD, FSI, and additive manufacturing at international conferences.

Labs & Teams: Leads the Computational Mechanics Group at UIUC, collaborating on digital twin frameworks, physics-informed machine learning, and multi-physics modeling for industrial applications.