Yuwen Zhang

Yuwen Zhang is a Chinese-American professor of mechanical engineering who is well known for his contributions to phase change heat transfer. He is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, where he served as a Department Chair from 2013 to 2017. He was named a James C. Dowell Professor in 2012, a Curators' Distinguished Professor in 2020 , and a Huber and Helen Croft Chair in Engineering in 2021.

Education and Career Yuwen Zhang was born in 1964 in Xiaoyi, Shanxi, China and spent his early life there until 1981, when he entered university. He earned his B.E. degree in turbomachinery engineering, M.E. and D.Eng. degrees in engineering thermophysics from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 1985, 1988 and 1991, respectively. In 1998, he received a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Connecticut.

Zhang began his academic career teaching at Xi'an Jiaotong University (1991—1994) before serving as a research associate at Wright State University (1994—1995) and the University of Connecticut (1995–1996). Following his doctoral studies, he worked as a research scientist at the University of Connecticut (1999-2000) and entered the private sector as a senior engineer at Thermoflow, Inc. in 2000. He returned to academia in 2001 as an assistant professor at New Mexico State University. In 2003, he joined the University of Missouri (MU) as an associate professor, rising to the rank of full professor in 2009. He served as the Department Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from 2013 to 2017.

He has developed models for a latent heat thermal energy storage system, as well as multiscale, multiphysics models for additive manufacturing (AM), including selective laser sintering (SLS) and laser chemical vapor deposition/infiltration (LCVD/LCVI). He has developed models of fluid flow and heat transfer in oscillating heat pipes, a heat transfer device that can be used in the thermal management of electronic devices and energy systems. He carried out theoretical studies on femtosecond laser interaction with metal and biological materials from molecular scales to system levels, and solved inverse heat transfer problems for the determination of the heating condition and/or temperature-dependent macro and micro thermophysical properties under uncertainty. He also investigated the mechanism of heat transfer enhancement in nanofluids, which are stable colloidal suspensions of solid nanomaterials with sizes typically on the order of 1-100 nm in the base fluid, via molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.

Thermal management and temperature uniformity improvement of Li-ion batteries using external and internal cooling methods were also systematically studied by utilizing pin-fin heat sinks and metal/non-metal foams, as well as electrolyte flow inside the embedded microchannels in the porous electrodes as a novel internal cooling technique. Moreover, he has applied AI and machine learning to the solution of multiphase heat and mass transfer and inverse heat conduction problems. More recently, he has developed a quantum lattice Boltzmann method for modeling heat conduction with an internal heat source and applied a Fourier neural operator, a deep-learning technique, to predict the melting of gallium in nickel porous media. He has also developed a Lagrangian–Eulerian model to simulate falling calcium oxide particles undergoing surface hydration, coupling physical, chemical, and thermal processes.

Honors and awards Top 2% of World Scientists, 2025 Highly Ranked Scholar, ScholarGPS, 2024 Fellow, American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers (ASTFE), 2024 Huber and Helen Croft Chair in Engineering, University of Missouri, 2021 Curators' Distinguished Professor, University of Missouri, 2020 Coulter Award, University of Missouri Coulter Translational Partnership Program, 2018 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2015 James C. Dowell Professorship, University of Missouri, 2012 Missouri Honor Senior Faculty Research Award, College of Engineering at the University of Missouri, 2010 Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity, University of Missouri, 2010 Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 2007 Associate Fellow of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), 2008 Faculty Fellow Award, College of Engineering at University of Missouri, 2007 Young Investigator Award, Office of Naval Research (one of 26 awarded nationally in all fields), 2002