👋🏼 Hello there, I’m Viknesh!

👨🏻‍🎓 PhD Candidate in the Scientific Computing & Imaging (SCI) Institute and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah, advised by Dr. Amirhossein Arzani. I work at the intersection of Fluid Mechanics and Scientific Machine Learning, developing Hybrid ML–Physics Methods that combine data-driven models and physics principles to solve complex spatio-temporal flow problems.

🔬 Research Interests: Scientific Machine Learning, Unsteady Aerodynamics, Computational Fluid Mechanics, Wildfire Dynamics, and Wind Tunnel Measurements.

🎓 Educational Background: I hold an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering with Aerodynamics major from IIT Kanpur, India, where I focused on both Computational and Experimental Aerodynamics, and a B.E. in Aeronautical Engineering from Anna University, Tamil Nadu, India, where I developed a strong interest in Aerodynamics and solving PDEs.

📚 See my CV here.

🔬 Academic Research

🤖 Scientific Machine Learning:
    • DIfferentiable Autoencoding Neural Operator (DIANO) framework, enabling a coarse-grid interpretable latent space, by methodological integration of Autoencoders, Operator learning, and Differentiable PDE solvers.
    • ADAM-SINDy, a differentiable optimization framework for identification of Parameterized Nonlinear Dynamical Systems. Check out the CRUNCH Seminar Talk.

🔥 Wildfire Dynamics:
    • Identified two new non-dimensional numbers governing the convection-diffusion-reaction wildfire combustion models for the first time. Leverages stable and unstable manifolds (LCS) derived from wind topology to improve fire prediction.

🛩️ Pitching Airfoil:
    • Identified upstream-convecting vortices (vortices advecting against the flow direction) on a pitching airfoil using Time-resolved PIV & Pressure measurements.

🌪️ Flow Instabilities:
    • Sensitivity of Multiple Hopf Bifurcations and critical Reynolds numbers in lid-driven cavity flow problems, noting the influence of numerical schemes and grid resolution.

📚 For the complete list of my publications, visit my Google Scholar Profile.

🖥️ Software and Simulations

Developed and optimized the following programs/solvers for scientific machine learning and fluid flow problems. If links are unavailable, the corresponding papers are still under review.