Dr. Sean Symon
Hello and welcome to the website! I am currently a lecturer at the University of Southampton in the AeroAstro Department. I was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne with Simon Illingworth and Ivan Marusic and I completed my Ph.D. with Beverley McKeon at Caltech. I also had the opportunity to participate in GALCIT's dual masters exchange program with Ecole Polytechnique, where I worked with David Quéré on superhydrophobic surfaces. My goal is combine experimental data with numerical simulations, which are not full fidelity, to extract more information out of existing experimental techniques. We can then improve our ability to model and manipulate complex flows.
Research Interests
Data assimilation
-adjoint-based optimization, variational and sequential methods, inverse problems, flow reconstruction methods
Reduced-order modeling
-proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and its variants, resolvent analysis, Galerkin projection
Wall-bounded turbulence
-energy transfer, attached eddy hypothesis, eddy viscosity modeling
Experimental fluid mechanics
-particle image velocimetry, bouncing oil drops, superhydrophobic surfaces, synthetic jets and flow control
Background
2020 - Lecturer at the University of Southampton
Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics Group
2018-2020 - Post-doctoral research fellow
University of Melbourne Fluids Group
2018 PhD Aeronautics - California Institute of Technology
2014 Masters in Fluid Mechanics - Ecole Polytechnique
2013 MS Aeronautics - California Institute of Technology
2012 BS Aerospace Engineering - University of Maryland
2012 BA French Language and Literature - Univ of MD
2012 Minor Violin Performance - University of Maryland