Welcome to the website for Prof. Perry Johnson’s research group at UC Irvine. Broadly speaking, our research is on the Physics and Simulation of Turbulence.
Turbulent flows are ubiquitous in both natural and engineered flows. Understanding, predicting, and manipulating turbulent flows is a key aspect in a wide range of applications, to name a few: aerodynamics, turbomachinery & propulsion, renewable energy, atmospheric science, and oceanography.
Our group discovers and elucidates the dynamics of turbulent flows with an eye toward appreciating unique characteristics of various specific flows as well as the universal behaviors common across a wide range of applications. Beyond physics discovery, we leverage fundamental insight to develop transformational modeling and simulation technology for engineering & scientific analysis.
News
- July 2025: Prof. Johnson was recognized as a 2024 Outstanding Reviewer for the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, based on the timeliness and quality of his peer reviews on submitted manuscripts (top 1% of reviewers).
- May 2025: Tanner Ragan passed his qualifying examination and has advanced to candidacy for the PhD degree.
- April 2025: Undergraduate student researcher Sam Stout received a 3-year graduate fellowship to begin his PhD at Stanford University in Fall 2025.
- March 2025: Mostafa Kamal passed his qualifying examination and has advanced to candidacy for the PhD degree.
- November 2024: PhD students Mostafa, Tanner, Pau, and Mark presented their work at the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) annual meeting in Salt Lake City, UT.
- October 2024: Prof. Johnson awarded the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, in the Hydrodynamics Related to Subsurface Vehicles program.
- September 2024: Amr Emam joined as a new PhD student for Fall 2024. He completed is BS and MS degrees from Alexandria University (Egypt).
- June – July 2024: Prof. Johnson and Pau Fradera-Soler participated in the Center for Turbulence Research Summer Program at Stanford University, collaborating on the topic of scalar dispersion in urban flows. Prof. Johnson served as the coordinator for the Geophysical Fluid Mechanics group.
- April 2024: Prof. Johnson co-organized the 17th Southern California Flow Physics Symposium (So Cal Fluids XVII) at UC Irvine: https://sites.uci.edu/socalfluidsxvii/.
- March 2024: Armin Kianfar successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled: First-moment Integral Equations for Boundary Layer Flows and Their Application. Congratulations Dr. Kianfar!
- January 2024: Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics article by Prof. Johnson and Prof. Michael Wilczek (Univ. of Bayreuth, Germany) on “Multiscale Velocity Gradients in Turbulence” is published: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-fluid-121021-031431
- December 2023: Prof. Johnson awarded the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, in the Unsteady Aerodynamics and Turbulent Flows program.
- November 2023: Prof. Johnson awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award.
- November 2023: All five PhD students in our group presented their research at the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) annual meeting in Washingon, DC.
- November 2023: Mostafa Kamal, Pau Fradera-Soler, Tanner Ragan, and Mark Warnecke passed their preliminary exams in Fluid Dynamics on their first attempt.
- November 2023: Armin Kianfar passed his qualifying examination and has advanced to candidacy for the PhD degree.
- May 2023: Tanner Ragan awarded the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship.
- May 2023: Article by Armin Kianfar et al. entitled “Angular momentum and moment of total enthalpy integral equations for high-speed boundary layers,” published as an Editors’ Suggestion in Physical Review Fluids: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.8.054603
