Sadaf Sobhani, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been selected for a 2023 NASA Early Career Faculty (ECF) Award. NASA will be funding Sobhani’s research proposal titled “Precision Ionic Liquids for Advanced Spacecraft Thermal Management (PLASMa).”
The award was announced in early September and is part of NASA’s Space Technology Research Grants Program. Through the ECF award program NASA supports early career faculty in their efforts to examine the theoretical feasibility of ideas and approaches that are critical to making science, space travel, and exploration more effective, affordable, and sustainable.
Sobhani’s proposal aims to use machine learning and novel ionic liquids to develop thermally stable, low viscosity, high-performance heat transfer fluids. Spacecraft encounter extreme thermal environments once they are beyond Earth’s orbit. As a result, active thermal control systems are essential. To work properly, the fluid used in a pumped fluid loops system must have high specific heat and thermal conductivity, low freezing point and viscosity, and remain in liquid phase at all times.
The universe of possible ionic liquids for use in such systems is too large to employ traditional computational and experimental methods to efficiently identify candidate liquids worth exploring. Sobhani will leverage machine learning techniques to overcome these large-scale combinatorial problems.
Sobahni is one of just seven researchers selected for this award in 2023. In announcing the award, NASA said, “Dr. Sobhani will leverage machine learning to expedite the discovery of novel ionic liquids with specific thermal properties beyond the limits of known heat transfer fluids, thus pushing the boundaries of performance for state-of-the-art thermal control.”
You can see the full list of 2023 NASA Early Career Faculty award-winning projects here.
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