News

The lab will host a field trip of the Rotating Detonation Engine facility as part of UNM Research & Discovery Week on Friday, November 6 at 10:00 am.

The Rotating Detonation Engine Materials Testbed was featured in Safety Spotlight, a university-wide communication from the UNM Office of the Vice President for Research profiling the lab’s safety culture and hazard-review process.

The lab’s U.S. patent application Dynamic Heat Insulation Towards Pressure Gain Combustion (US 2026/0251307 A1) was published, assigned to UNM Rainforest Innovations.

Four papers from the group were accepted to AIAA SciTech 2027: Canonical Performance Parameters for Rotating Detonation Engine Materials (Vrocharis et al.), Conventional Thermal Barrier Coatings Tested Under Rotating Detonation Environments (Cestari et al.), Calorimetric Heat Flux Measurements in a Hydrogen–Air Rotating Detonation Engine (Samra et al.), and Semi-transparent Ceramic System Radiation Modeling Validation Against Experimental Data (Pascual et al.).

Brendan Canales received a New Mexico Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Research Scholarship and was invited to present his research at the New Mexico Research Symposium.

The lab hosted New Mexico Economic Development Department Cabinet Secretary Rob Black and the Sandia Center for Advanced Manufacturing Innovation (CAMINO) group for a tour and technical discussion of the Rotating Detonation Engine facility.

Christos Koutsouras defended his diploma thesis, Frequency Domain Design of a Heat Flux Sensor for Rotating Detonation Engines, at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Athanasios Skevas’s paper Inverse Heat Conduction in Multilayer Walls via Partial Singular Value Decomposition was published in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.

Mario Cestari and Kerly Reyes Contreras won the Large Scale Additive Action Team Student Pitch Competition at the CSAT/LSAAT Action Team Event in Worcester, MA, where Mario Cestari presented HADES: A Rotating Detonation Engine Materials Testbed Facility and Micah Wolbrecht presented Characterization of AM Ceramics in a Continuous Detonation Environment.

Prof. Koutsakis gave the technical talk at the AIAA Albuquerque Annual Awards event.

Rational Design of an Architected-Wall Surface Temperature Sensor for Heat Flux Determination was published in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, with collaborators at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Perla Salinas and Andrew Suplicki-Venagli completed their M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering.

Micah Wolbrecht completed his honors thesis, Design of a Modular Rotating Detonation Combustor Materials Testbed.

Athanasios Skevas presented the poster A hypersonic detonation-based engine as an AI materials discovery testbed at Designing Materials for the Physical Economy in San Francisco, CA.

Prof. Koutsakis spoke at the International Workshop on Detonation for Propulsion at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.

The lab hosted Prof. David L. Poerschke (University of Minnesota) for a graduate seminar on materials design for thermal and environmental barrier coatings.

Prof. Koutsakis was appointed AIAA Faculty Liaison for the UNM School of Engineering.

Prof. Koutsakis served as an invited panelist for Research Safety Week, hosted by UNM Environmental Health & Safety.

Prof. Koutsakis joined the advisory board of the Research and Innovation Faculty Group, UNM School of Engineering.

Dimitrios Vrocharis presented Concept of Dynamic Heat Insulation for Rotating Detonation Engines at AIAA SciTech 2026.

The lab hosted Dr. Flavio Chuahy (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) for a joint Mechanical Engineering / Nuclear Engineering graduate seminar at UNM.

Solvus Global hosted a technical seminar in Worcester, MA on cold spray additive manufacturing for detonation-based rocket engine chambers.

A seminar to the Cordero Group at MIT covered materials for rotating detonation engines.

The Clarke Group at Harvard University hosted a seminar on radiation barrier coatings and reflective fibrous insulation.

New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology hosted the lab’s work in its Engineering Graduate Seminar.

Prof. Koutsakis was elected to the External Advisory Board of the University of Western Macedonia, Greece.

The lab received an Office of Naval Research award for Sustained Thermomechanical Response of High-frequency Propulsion Materials, with co-PIs Prof. Trice and Prof. Youngblood (Purdue University).

The UAV Innovation Research Center at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki hosted a seminar on rotating detonation engine materials research.

Prof. Koutsakis spoke at the Thermal and Environmental Barrier Coatings VII conference in Irsee, Germany.

Dimitrios Vrocharis presented Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Additively Manufactured Mini Channels at ASME Turbo Expo in Memphis, TN.

The lab received a DOE University Turbine Systems Research award for Hydrogen Rotating Detonation Engine Testbed for Coating Materials Evaluation and Selection, with co-PI Prof. Clarke (Harvard University).

An invited seminar at the Engineering Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory, covered heat transfer and materials in detonation-based propulsion.

Angelo Flores completed his honors thesis, Development of an H₂–Air Pre-detonator System.

Prof. Koutsakis received a UNM Provost’s Professional Conference Support Fund award.

Dimitrios Vrocharis received a U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Fellowship at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, studying thermomechanical stresses in additively manufactured parts for rotating detonation combustion.

The Thermal Test Complex at Sandia National Laboratories hosted an invited seminar on the lab’s work in high-temperature propulsion materials.

Design Metrics for Highly Reflective Fibrous Insulation was published in Advanced Materials Technologies, with Nikhil Deliwala and Prof. David R. Clarke (Harvard University).

Micah Wolbrecht received a New Mexico Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Research Scholarship for Data Acquisition and Post-Processing Procedure to Measure Heat Transfer in Rocket Chamber Walls, supporting the lab’s collaboration with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

Dimitrios Vrocharis presented a poster on the experimental measurement of cooling heat transfer coefficients for additively manufactured propulsion engines at the NASA Thermal & Fluids Analysis Workshop hosted by Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH.

Dimitrios Vrocharis passed his Ph.D. qualifying exams.

Optical Absorption Effects in Thermal Radiation Barrier Coating Materials was published in Surface and Coatings Technology, with Prof. David R. Clarke (Harvard University).