The success of my research can be attributed, in part, to the knowledgeable professors, kind staff, and talented students at Northwestern.”
Leyun Feng (she/her)
PhD Candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering
Leyun Feng is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering. Her research is on interfacial transport phenomena, which involve the movement of mass, energy, or momentum at the boundary between two different phases of matter. Leyun is a current member of the Dr. Kyoo-Chul Kenneth Park Lab. She is also the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the inaugural Mechanical Engineering Graduate Mentorship Award and the Martin Outstanding Doctoral Fellowship.
How would you describe your research and/or work to a non-academic audience?
My research focuses on the interfacial transport phenomena. In short, interfacial transport phenomena are what occur at the interface that divides two phases of materials. It is not only scientifically interesting, but also critical to many applications in industry and daily life.
Tell us what inspired your research and/or work.
Nature. For example, a lot of plants, including some bushes, cacti, and grass, have a dual-scale structure, which inspired me to design a better fog collector with a high fog collection efficiency to fight against the global water crisis.
What do you find both rewarding and challenging about your research and/or work?
The research on the interfacial transport phenomena is multidisciplinary in two distinct ways. The first is that this research is at the intersection of mathematics, physics, chemistry, fluid mechanics, and even sometimes biology. The second way is it is at the frontier between basic scientific and industrial research. I believe it is this status that generates both opportunities and challenges for various researchers, including myself.
Why Northwestern?
I chose Northwestern primarily for its collaborative research environment. Others are always willing to help. The success of my research can be attributed, in part, to the knowledgeable professors, kind staff, and talented students at Northwestern.
Tell us about a current achievement or something you're working on that excites you.
In a recently published paper [1], I reported a unique directional transport phenomenon during the coalescence of two droplets on a pre-wetted cylindrical fiber, where the larger droplet is pulled toward the smaller one. This occurs primarily because of the asymmetric viscous friction that the droplets experience during the coalescence. I believe it is not only fundamentally closely related to the directional liquid transport with various fibrous media and liquids in nature, but it also has wide-ranging impacts to many practical applications, such as fog/dew collection, anti-ice/frost, mist elimination, filtration, oil/water separation, and more.
[1] Feng, Leyun, et al. "Short-time asymmetric droplet coalescence dynamics on a pre-wetted fiber." Applied Physics Letters 125.6 (2024).
Publish Date: September 17, 2024
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