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Rui Xu

Assistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Education

  • 2019, Doctoral Degree, Stanford University
  • 2014, Master's Degree, Northwestern University
  • 2012, Bachelor's Degree, Shanghai Jiaotong University

Biography

Rui (Ray) Xu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, starting in January 2025. Before joining USC, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University and the PULSE Institute in the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2019, his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2014, and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2012. His research centers around multiscale reacting flow modeling to enable sustainable and high-speed aerospace propulsion, and clean energy transitions. He is the recipient of the ACS Wiley Computers in Chemistry Outstanding Postdoc Award in 2024.

Research Summary

At the Xu SACE Research Group at USC, our research mission is to advance aerospace sustainability and clean energy transitions. We develop high-performance, multiscale computational approaches for reacting flows, and bridge fast quantum chemistry calculation, chemical kinetic modeling, and turbulence-resolved flow simulations, with the aid of machine learning and data-driven methods. We are particularly interested in applications such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) design and modeling, high-speed reacting flow physics study, and sustainable energy materials computational design.

Appointments
Office
  • Olin Hall of Engineering
  • 3650 McClintock Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90089
Contact Information
  • rui.ray.xu@usc.edu
Links