Dr Maryam Ghodrat
- Doctor of Philosophy, University of New South Wale, UNSW Sydney (2014)
- Master of Engineering ,University of New South Wale, UNSW Sydney (2010)
Dr Maryam Ghodrat is a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering specialised in Thermal Fluid and Energy System with key focus on fire dynamics and ignition modeling. She is leading two research teams Heat Transfer and Combustion and Adaptive Design for Resilient Structures at School of Engineering and Technology, UNSW Canberra with a team of 5 PhD students, one RA and 6 honour students. Her research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the development of robust, scalable, and adaptive strategies to mitigate fire damage through effective design, construction, and use of novel materials.
Her research focuses on:
- Fire Dynamics and Suppression
- Fire Safety Design &
- Infrastructure Resilience
In the realm of fire safety, her work involves examining impact of wildfires on the built environment, fire behavior of emerging construction materials, assessing fire performance of modern engineered facades and investigating fire safety of green walls. In the area of infrastructure resilience, she is working on
- Urban Infrastructure resilience to fire disaster
- Quantifying fire safety performance of buildings including sustainable and fire resilient buildings , this includes fire safety of large scale energy storage systems and batteries.
In 2021, Dr Ghodrat established and leads Pyrometric Laboratory at School of Engineering and Technology UNSW Canberra with several dedicated flame behaviour testing equipment to unravel the fundamental behaviour of materials, products and systems exposed to direct and indirect flame. She has also designed and built a modular subsonic combustion wind tunnel for visualisation of flame propagation at UNSW.
In her roles prior to joining UNSW, Dr. Ghodrat's research primarily focused on developing accurate physical and CFD models to advance new energy technologies for renewable fuels such as hydrogen and biomass.
She is currently serving as the Engineering Work Experience (Work Integrated Learning) Coordinator at the School of Engineering and Technology, UNSW Canberra. She is actively contributing to the development of the school's new WIL program and aligning its policies with the newly implemented system.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
More than 250k of internal and 700 k of external competitive grants as lead or co-investigator in the past 6 years.
- Goldstar award for 2024, ARC-DP placed top 10%
- Recognized as one of the top 2% of highly cited research scientists in the world by Stanford University and Elsevier (2024).
- Goldstar award for 2023, ARC-DP placed top 10%
- School of Engineering and Technology Publication award for outstanding research outcome in 2022.
- Recognized as one of the top 2% of highly cited research scientists in the world by Stanford University and Elsevier (2023).
- Goldstar award for 2022, ARC-DP placed top 10%
- Best Paper Award, International Conference of Flow Dynamics (ICFD) conference, 2023
- People choice award for my pitch on "Pyrometric Lab" , UNSW Pitch Night, 2023
- Researcher Development Awards for gender equity (WSU)
- UNSW Postgraduate Research Support Scheme (PRSS) Conference Travel Grant
- University Industry Postgraduate Award, the University of New South Wales
Research Interest includes:
- Smouldering combustion
- Fire and Materials
- Li-ion Battery, thermal runaway mitigation
- Urban AI, Built Environment and Climate change
- AI and hybrid methods in thermal analyses
- Cooling techs for batteries and fuel cells (Fire Safety Mitigation including detection in EV's Li Ion Batteries)
- Energy-efficient thermal systems
- Thermo-Fluid visualisation
- Environmental heat & mass transfer
- Climate change impact on thermal systems
- Thermal management in sustainable buildings
- Fire Safety Design
- Impact of wildfires on the built environment
- Wildland Urban Interface Fire Modeling
Current research activities cover four broad and interdisciplinary fields :
Design for Extreme Environment
- Application of data assimilation to risk and disaster management.
- Li-ion batteries and large scale energy storage systems safety
- Fire Safety and Smart Building
- Infrastructure and community resilience
- Fire modeling including CFD and zone modeling;
- Wind Engineering
Emissions and pollution Transport Physics
- Numerical models in predicting atmospheric dispersion of pollutant.
- Computational Fluid dynamic simulation of plume dispersion in Urban areas
Fire Safety Design
- Performance-based fire safety design
- Design and development of building fire safety strategies.
- Fire Safety analysis of new materials
- Fire Safety design and analysis of timber buildings
- Mitigating fire damage by proper design, construction, arrangement and use of buildings, materials and structures
Decarbonization of Energy Sector
Focused on application of CFD modeling and thermodynamic analysis in design and optimization of energy-efficient technologies
- Hybrid renewable energy systems for net zero energy buildings (Thermodynamic analysis)
- Co gasification of biomass and EVA from end of life solar panels (Numerical modeling and thermodynamic analysis)
- Thermodynamic analysis of multi generation power system based on Hybrid renewable energy configurations
- Executive committee of Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand Inc. (MSSANZ)
- Scientific committee member of 5th International Conference on Fluid Flow and Thermal Science (ICFFTS 2024), Portugal
- Scientific committee member of International Conference on Fire Safety Engineering Research and Practice (iCFSERP-2024)
- Scientific committee member of 5th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Safety Materials Science and Engineering (2023, Sydney AUS)
- Scientific committee member of Australian Combustion Symposium, 2023, Darwin, NT
- Scientific committee member of Australian Fluid Mechanics Conference, Sydney, 2023
-
Mentor in International Association of Wildland Fire
In the Media:
New 'fire lab' to help researchers develop better flame-resistant products (unsw.edu.au)
Warman returns to UNSW Canberra
Memberships
Member of :
- International association for fire safety science
- International Association of Wildland Fire
- Combustion Institute
- Australian Institute of Energy
- Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC)
- Woman in Science and Engineering (WisE)
- Science & Technology Australia
- Women in Engineering @ UNSW
My Research Supervision
Honour thesis as Main supervisor:
- Jamie Van Den Berg (Thesis title :Post fire behaviour of aeronautical multi-layer polymer metal laminates)
- Nikita Khaliavin (Thesis title :Thermal Stability and Fire Performance of Natural Fiber Fabric-Reinforced Polymer Composites with Different Fire Retardants)
- Johnny Nabuai (Thesis title: Assessing flame retardancy of Fibre reinforced epoxy resin composite for aerospace and aviation
- Joshua Lowth (Thesis title: flammability behaviour of wood-based composites)
- Ashleigh Burns (Thesis title: Developing eco-friendly waterborne fabric coating for CBRN equipment)
- Matthew Austin (Thesis title: Post fire behavior and microstructure degradation of aeronautical polymer composites)
- Elise Kate Swann (Thesis title :Flammability and Flame Resistance in Upholstered Furniture)
- Rohnan Scott (Thesis title: Smouldering Combustion of Fiber Insulation Materials)
- Matthew Hordern (Thesis title: Burning Behaviours of Polymeric Materials in Vehicle Furnishings)
- Jonathan Lu (Thesis title : A Comparative Analysis of Thermal Performance of Firefighter Clothing)
- Philip L. Davies (Thesis title: Numerical investigation of the effect of wind speed on wildfire interaction with an idealized building)
Bachelor of Technology thesis supervision:
- Hamish Jobling (Thesis title: Assessing flame retardancy of fibre-reinforced epoxy resin composites for aerospace and aviation)
- Melvin Ding (Thesis title: Post fire behaviour of aeronautical multi-layer polymer metal laminates)
Post Doctoral research fellow:
- Dr Ao Li (Past)
- Dr Anan Du (past)
HDR completions (as main supervisor):
- Juan Alonso
- Alvaro Alvarez
- Nirosh Nuwan Nammuni
- Olaoluwa Dawodu
- Zahra Nouri (co-supervisor)
Accepting PhD students.
PhD positions are available for highly motivated candidate in materials , civil or mechanical engineering . Knowledge and experience in working with OpenFOAM software is highly desirable.
Ideal candidates should have:
- A four-year Bachelor's and two-years MSc degrees with high WAMs (minimum of 87%) and research experience from top institutions in the field of Mechanical or civil engineering
- A track record of publications in top-ranked scholarly journals and presentations in peer-reviewed conferences; and,
- Good interpersonal, communication, presentation and writing skills in English.
If you are interested in doing a PhD in my group , please send a copy of PDF combining your CV, Transcripts and English Test Results to m.ghodrat@unsw.edu.au
My Teaching
I have taught in over 12 undergraduate and graduate courses, currently at UNSW and in previous academic roles at other universities
My current teaching at UNSW:
- Heat transfer and Refrigeration (ZEIT37010)
- Introduction to Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering (ZEIT1504)- Course coordinator
- Electrical and Mechanical plants (ZEIT4504)- Course coordinator
- Engineering Mechanics (ZEIT1503)
- Engineering Research (ZEIT4500 and ZEIT4501)
Previously taught at UNSW:
- Mechanical and Electronic Design (ZEIT2501)
- Mechanics of Solids (CVEN2301)