UK Fluids 2025 Liverpool Organising Committee

Dr. Rishav Agrawal is a researcher with expertise in fluid dynamics and rheology. His work spans topics such as turbulent flows, fluid instabilities, geophysical flows, and the rheological properties of yield stress fluids. Currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool, he develops advanced rheology techniques to enable innovative material fabrication.

Dr. Davide Dapelo’s scientific interests are numerical modelling of multiphase non-Newtonian flow applied in water managing and, more specifically, anaerobic digestion for wastewater treatment. After using and developing finite-volume Computational Fluid dynamics (CFD) models, my focus shifted towards developing new models and methodologies for the Lattice-Boltzmann method, and I am now part of the OpenLB development team. My most recent interest consists of investigating the possibility of linking CFD to artificial intelligence

Dr. Esther García-Tuñón is an UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and the Materials Innovation Factory at the University of Liverpool.

Her research aims to bridge advanced materials discovery and manufacturing, with a focus on the design and understanding of complex fluids for 3D printing applications.

Dr Jonny Higham is a Senior Lecturer in contemporary and dynamic processes. His research spans from fundamental experimental fluid mechanics—exploring 3D fractal forcing of turbulence and granular mechanics—to applied fluid mechanics, including river dynamics, solar flare magnetohydrodynamics, and pollution dispersion in urban environments. His current work focuses on the intricate relationships between fluid flows, particulate matter concentrations, and human health across the entire city of Liverpool.

Dr. Eda Majtan PhD CEng MICE FHEA is a lecturer in environmental fluid mechanics at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Liverpool. Her research focuses on the flood resilience of hydraulic structures and associated complex fluid-structure interaction. Her expertise includes physical experiments, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and finite element (FE) methods.

Dr. Henry Ng obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2012 under the guidance of Ivan Marusic, Jason Monty and Min Chong. Prior to re-joining Liverpool, he was a Research Associate at the University of Melbourne (2011-2012,2020-2021), the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (2012-2014), the University of Cambridge (2014-2017), the University of Liverpool (2017-2020) and RMIT University (2021-2023). During that time, Henry has contributed to several Defence (DSTG-Australia, DSO-Singapore) and Industry (Rolls Royce, National Nuclear Laboratory) funded projects. His primary research interest is experimental fluid mechanics focussing on wall-bounded turbulent flows, applied aero- and hydrodynamics, the rheology of complex fluids, and the design and construction of bespoke flow rigs.

Dr. Annie Ockelford is a lecturer in water and environmental engineering at the University of Liverpool.  Her research interests include (i) quantifying controls on microplastic contamination in fluvial, aeolian and soil environments including in response to flood events; (ii) understanding how changes to river flow regimes impact sediment transport capacities and (iii) working with communities to quantify the impact of natural flood management practices on flood risk.

Dr. Mohad Nezhad is a Professor of Environmental Fluid Mechanics specializing in flow dynamics, mixing processes, and reactive transport in heterogeneous and fractured porous materials. Her research focuses on understanding the complex interactions of fluids in natural and engineered environments, with an emphasis on uncertainty quantification and propagation across the scales to improve predictive modelling and enhance the reliability of subsurface flow and transport analyses. She is the Vice Chair of the IAHR Committee on Groundwater Hydraulics and Management and has served as an editorial board member for several journals, including Journal of Hydrology, Transport in Porous Media, Environmental Geotechnics, and Journal of Porous Media.

Dr Sharratt is an early career researcher in Soft Materials and Complex Fluids within the School of Engineering at the University of Liverpool. He holds an MSci in Chemistry from the University of Bristol and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London, focusing on microflow approaches to formation of polymer particles and control of directional solidification processes. His research interests are centred on experimentally characterising the self and stimulated assemblies of soft materials (polymers, surfactants, colloids) to understand design principles for new materials. His Soft Material group aims to develop links between underlying chemistry, processing routes and structure (and corresponding function) of these materials. They explore flow-based approaches to make and study the behaviours of soft materials and characterise their structures on the mesoscale using, for example, small-angle scattering.

Sebastian Timme is a Professor of Aerodynamics at the University of Liverpool. He has published more than 80 journal and conference papers on the subject of computational aerodynamics and aeroelasticity, model order reduction and machine learning.

Dr Yan Zhou is a Lecturer based in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Liverpool. Her research interests cover multi-phase flow simulation including sand/mud transport and sand-mud mixture simulation. Combining with expertise in regular/breaking wave and current simulation, the models have been applied to scour around piles of offshore wind turbines, beach evolution, flow through porous media and submarine turbidity current.