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2026:

• Aug: Mr Maksym Petrenko joined our team as an MPhil student. He will work on flapping wing/drag reduction project.

• Jul: Dr Jingtao Ma rejoined the team as a Research Associate. Jingtao was a PhD student with us from Mar 2016 to Dec 2019, when he produced a high-quality thesis: Effects of the Non-Newtonian Rheology on the Fluid-Structure Interactions in Biological Flows (Download)

• Jun: A/Prof Tian delivered a keynote entitled ``Scaling laws for lift generation of flapping wings in compressible flows'' at DisCoVor, a plenary presentation entitled ``Bio-inspired flapping wings: From natural flyers on Earth to MAVs on Mars'' at 12th Australasian Congress on Applied Mechanics.

• Feb: A/Prof Tian delivered a plenary presentation entitled ``Bio-inspired flapping wings: From insect on Earth to flapping-wing UAV on Mars'' at Engineering Mathematics Group EMCA Workshop, Engineering Mathematics Group at ANZIAM Conference, an invited presentation entitled ``Wall-modelled immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method and its applications'' at The 2nd Australasian Conference on Particle Approaches and Applications in Fluids (ACPAAF2026).

• Jan: Dr Seyed Mohsen Hashem Zadeh was awarded his PhD degree.

2025:

• Dec: Dr Nathan Widdup was awarded his PhD degree. Nathan will continue his career with DSTG. Our PhD candidate Mr Hong Ren was awarded the Best Student Presentation at APCOM 2025.

• Oct: Our CFD solver, SuperSportFlow was deployed to Australian sports. See the following link for more details: FLWYD/SSF.

• Sept: Mr Nathan Widdup's work, "The aerodynamic and acoustic performance of a bumblebee-inspired micro-air vehicle in Martian atmosphere", was selected as one of the Best Papers and feathured by Scilight, AIP.

• July: UNSW Team was awarded the Australian Research Council Research Hub with $5M. Saydam, S, Zhang, W., Love, P., Ranjith, P., Canbulat, I., Li, J., Dixit, V., Knights, P., Arns, C., John, M., Roshan, H., Li, B., Tian, F. B., Ata, S. Karakus, M., Oh, Y., Kwong, C. W., Katupitiya, J., Zhang, C., Zhang, X., Daiyan, R., Zhou, J., Balatbat, M., Ramandi, H. L., Nguyen, V. P., Martin, J., Vo-Doan, T. T., and Zhao, J., Next Generation Mining Methods, Australian Research Council Research Hub, 2025-2029.

• July & August: Our team member, Nathan Widdup was awarded the Best Student Presentation at FSSIC 2025. Mr Vigneshwaran (Vicky) Rajendran was awarded his MRes degree from UNSW. He will continue his study with us for PhD.

• Aprial & May: Our team members, Dr Ramyar Rahimi and Dr Karthick Dhileep, were awarded their PhD degrees from UNSW.

• Feb: Our team member, Dr Mohammad Ghaffari, was awarded his PhD degree from UNSW.

• Jan: Our team member, Dr Mohammed Ibrahim, was awarded his PhD degree from UNSW.

2024:

• Dec: Our team member, Dr Omar Aref, was awarded his PhD degree from UNSW.

• May: Our team member, Dr Bruce Jin, was awarded his PhD degree from UNSW. Dr Jin has achieved a lot in research during his time with us. He is now a Research Associate with CSIRO. We welcome a talent, Mr Marshall, to be one member in the team, as a PhD, working on the bio-inspired flapping wings on Mars.

• Jan: A/Prof Fangbao Tian and his collaborators received a CRC grant from Australian Composites Manufacturing CRC Ltd (ACM CRC). The grant will support our research on the hydrodynamics and optimisation of heaving-foil propellers.

2023:

• Oct: A/Prof Fangbao Tian and his collaborators received a Discovery Project from the Australian Research Council (ARC). The grant will support our research on the aerodynamics of moving wings in the Martian atmosphere during next three years.

• May: Two gentes, Hong Ren and Vigneshwaran (Vicky) Rajendran, joined us as HDR candidates. They will work on FSI topics by using IBM.

• Feb: A/Prof Tian was appointed as Deputy Head of School - Research of SEIT, UNSW Canberra. The role will commence in July 2023.

2022:

• Oct: Our paper has been listed as No.1 of most cited articles published in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science in the last 3 year (see paper from the journal).

• Jun: Dr Tian was invited to be an Associate Editor of Journal of Fluids and Structures. Xueyu has submitted his PhD thesis - A fantastic achievement for him. Dr Tian was selected as one member of UNSW Canberra Higher Degree Research Committee. This is a two-year service role.

• April: Dr Tian was appointed as an Interim Postgraduate Coordinator of SEIT, UNSW Canberra from April to Jan 2023.

• Mar: The SMC Camberra chapter was awarded the IEEE Outstanding SMCS Chapter Award, which was chaired by A/Prof Fang-Bao Tian, Dr Huadong Mo and A/Prof Daoyi Dong. This is an excellent achievement by the cohesive work of IEEE ACT Section.

• Jan: Dr Tian was promoted to Associate Professor.

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2021:

• Dec: Dr Fang-Bao Tian was awarded Outstanding Volunteer Award by IEEE ACT Section.

• Sept: AIS aproved a further support of $120k to develop fluid dynamics solver for sport-related complex flows.

• May: Our paper published in Inst. Mech. Eng. C J. Mech. Eng. Sci. has been identified as one of the Most Cited Articles (see paper from the journal). Here is the screen snapshot:

• May: Three gentes, Nathan Widdup, Mohammed Fouad Kamel Ibrahim and Ramyar Rahimi, joined us as PhD candidates. They will work on FSI topics by using IBM.

• Feb: We announced our output of AIS project: SuperSportFlow, which is a novel CFD software for modelling sport-related flows.

2020:

• Nov: Our work has been featured by Australian science news site, Particle (see details from the web).

• Sept: Ms Fei Chai, Mr Omar Aref and Mr Mohammad Ghaffari joined us as PhD candidates via remote enrollment.

• Jul: Dr Methma RAJAMUNI joined us as a Research Associate working on fluid-structure-acoustics interaction of flapping wings.

• Apr: AIS approved $100k to further support our research in modelling of sport-related fluid dynamics and FSI.

• Feb: A case study of our work has been made by Pawsey (see details from the web). Mr Bruce Jin joined us as a PhD student working on IB-LBM simulation of FSI within turbulence boundary layer.

• Jan: Dr Bo YIN from Institute of Mechanics, CAS joined us as a Visiting Fellow.

2019:

• Dec: Dr Fangbao Tian and his collaborators received a Discovery Project from the Australian Research Council (ARC). The grant will support our research on the fluid-structure-acoustics interaction of bio-inspired flapping wings during next three years.

• Nov: We received grants from US Navy & Airforce, Shukun Tech and Department of Industry, Innovation and Science -- Innovation Connections Grant.

• June: We received a grant from AIS, supporting our research on numerical methods for aerodynamics of bicycle wheels. Dr Naoki Ikegaya and Dr Chiyoko Hirose from Kyushu University visited us, and gave presentations introducing their research progresses.

• May: Li's paper was published by PRE (see paper from the journal).

• April: Fangbao was invited to give presentations at Kunming University of SCience and Technology and Beijing Institute of Technology; The review paper, Recent trends and progresses in the immersed boundary method, was accepted for publivcation by JMES (see paper from the journal). The paper, A hybrid immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann/finite difference method for coupled dynamics of fluid flow, advection, diffusion and adsorption in fractured and porous media, was accepted for publication by Computers and Geosciences (see paper from the journal).

• February: Jingtao's paper was published by PRE with Figure be displayed on PRE web site as part of our "Kaleidoscope" (see paper from the journal).

2018:

• October: Dr Timm Krueger at the University of Edinburgh visited us for one month.

• September: Our recent paper published on Journal of Computational Physics is listed as one of the Most Downloaded Papers in Last 90 Days on the journal website (see paper from the journal). Here is the screen snapshot:

• August: Mr Xueyu JI joined us as a PhD student working on Flapping foil energy harvesting, acoustics and optimization.

• July: Dr Fangbao Tian was invited to give a Keynote Presentation for Immersed Methods for CFD and Fluid-Structure Interaction at The 13th World Congress in Computational Mechanics, New York, USA, July 22-27, 2018.

• June: Mr Zhengliang Liu was awarded the PhD degree. Congratulations!

• May: Mr Aamer Shahzad was awarded the PhD degree. Congratulations! We had an FSI workshop at UNSW Canberra, with lots of high quality presentations from international research leaders.

• January: Our paper published in Journal of Computational Physics has been identified as one of the Most Cited Journal of Computational Physics Articles (see paper from the journal). Here is the screen snapshot:

2017:

• December: Dr Tian was awarded UNSW Canberra Silverstar Award. Zhengliang's paper was published by Physics of Fluids and collected in Editor's Picks (see paper from the journal). Here is the screen snapshot:

• September: Our recent paper published on Journal of Computational Physics is listed as one of the Most Downloaded Papers in Last 90 Days on the journal website (see paper from the journal). Here is the screen snapshot:

• August: Mr Mudassir Ahmed joined us as a PhD student working on aerodynamics of flapping foils.

• July: Dr Fang-Bao Tian was promoted to Senior Lectuer; Dr Li WANG joined us again, as a Research Associate.

• June: A paper entitled "An immersed boundary method for fluid-structure interaction with compressible multiphase flows" and authored by Wang, Currao, Han, Neely, Young & Tian was published by the Journal of Computational Physics (see paper from the journal); Our paper entitled "Refuging rainbow trout selectively exploit flows behind tandem cylinders" and authored by Stewart, Tian, Akanyeti, Walker & Liao, published by the Journal of Experimental Biology (see paper from the journal), was selected into JEB Subject collection: Comparative biomechanics of movement.

• March: Qiuxiang anf Yi arrived in Canberra, and officially joined us as PhD students.

• February: The School offered us an internal grant to support a two-year postdoc.

• January: Our work published in Journal of Fluids and Structures was awarded Highly Cited Research. It is one of the 5 most highly cited papers published in Journal of Fluids and Structures. Here is the screen snapshot:

2016:

• November: Dr Tian was awarded UNSW Canberra Silverstar Award. A/Prof Dongyan Gao from Nanjing Institute of Technology visitited us and will be here for 6 months.

• October: Dr Tian got tenured with the UNSW.

• August: Fangbao joined the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science.

• July: A paper entitled "Refuging rainbow trout selectively exploit flows behind tandem cylinders" and authored by Stewart, Tian, Akanyeti, Walker & Liao was published by the Journal of Experimental Biology (see paper from the journal). It was list as Editors' choice paper, and highlighted by this month's issue of JEB. Here are the screen snapshots:

• July: Dr Yi Sui from Queen Mary University of London visitited us for 1 month. Liyong Zou from Institute of Fluid Phyics, CIEP visited us.

• March: Soudeh and Jingtao arrived in Canberra, and officially joined us as PhD students.

• February: Dr Fangbao Tian received the UNSW Canberra Rector's Start-Up Grant. The grant will support a preliminary research on the modelling of collective swimming sperms.

• January: Dr Fangbao Tian received the UNSW complementary support for ARC DECRA. The grant will support HPCs and travels during the DECRA. Mr Edward Petersen joined us as an undergraduate practicum student working on FSI of sperm swimming.

2015:

• November: Dr Fangbao Tian received the UNSW Early Career Researcher Grant. The grant will support a preliminary research on the modelling of arteriovenous-graft-thrombosis prediction. Mr Li WANG, a joint PhD student from the Beijing Institute of Technology, joined our lab. He will be staying with us for one year and working on fluid-structure interaction analysis for blast waves.

• October: Dr Fangbao Tian received the prestigious Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council (ARC). The grant will support our research on the modelling of fluid-structure interactions in biological flows during next three years.

• July: Lincheng joined the lab to pursue his PhD degree here with us. He will work on "Fluid-structure-acoustics interaction analysis for flapping wing" which is an interesting, useful and challenging topic.

• July: Our paper published on Journal of Computational Physics is listed as the Most Downloaded Paper in Last 90 Days on the journal website (see paper from the journal). It has been listed as one of the most downloaded papers since its publication. Here is the screen snapshot:

• July: Fangbao went to Perth to attend The 3rd Symposium on Fluid-Structure-Sound Interactions and Control and gave a talk on the 3D simulations of two tandem arranged flags.

• June: Our paper (Onset of instability of a flag in uniform flow) published in TAML has been awarded as the Theoretical & Applied Mechanics Letters 2012 Best Paper Award.

• March: Fangbao went to Taiwan, China to attend The 18th International Conference on Finite Elements in Flow Problems and gave an invited lecture.

• March: Fangbao went to U21 ECR Workshops held by the University College Dublin, Ireland.

• February: Fangbao was invited to publish a research paper in Math. Model. Meth. Appl. Sci.

2014:

• December: The paper, "A numerical study of linear and nonlinear kinematic models in fish swimming with the DSD/SST method", has been accepted for publication by Comput. Mech.

• July: The paper, "Improving power-extraction efficiency of a flapping plate: From passive deformation to active control", has been accepted for publication by J. Fluids Struct..

• July: Fangbao went to ICCFD8 in Chengdu. During this trip, he visted Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Baihang University (BU), and University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He gave talks in BIT and USTC, and had nice discussions in BU and UCAS.

• April: Our recent paper published on Journal of Computational Physics is listed as one of the Most Downloaded Papers in Last 90 Days on the journal website (see paper from the journal). Here is the screen snapshot:

• April: Dr Fangbao Tian got a Tenure Track Lecturer position in the SEIT, University of New South Wales Canberra. This position will start from this September.

• April: Our collaborative work, "Deforming-Spatial-Domain/Stabilized Space-Time (DSD/SST) method in computation of non-Newtonian fluid flow and heat transfer with moving boundaries", has been identified as a Key Scientific Article contributing to excellence in engineering scientific and industrial research, by Target Selection Team at Advances in Engineering. Find details from this link.

• March: The work "FSI modeling with the DSD/SST method for the fluid and finite difference method for the structure", has been accepted for publication by Comput. Mech.

• January: The work "Fluid-structure interaction involving large deformations: 3D simulations and applications to biological systems", has been published by J. Comput. Phys.; Our research on hummingbird aerodynamics (led by Dr Haoxiang Luo) is featured on NPR's new "Skunk Bear" Tumblr blog: This computer simulation of a hummingbird. In this work, I performed a simulation of an ideal hummingbird model, as demonstrated by the animation in "Skunk Bear". The Vanderbilt University Medical Center Reporter recently highlighted the collaborative research efforts of the collaboration between Otolaryngology and Mechanical Engineering to investigate simulations of three-dimensional fluid-structure interactions of vocal fold vibration (I am the Chief Investigator of the numerical modeling work). Click here for the details.

2013:

• August 24: I arrived at the University of New South Wales at Canberra, where I will work for three years on the insect flight. In addition, I will teach several courses on CFD and fluid mechanics.

• July-August: The work "Deforming-Spatial-Domain/Stabilized Space-Time (DSD/SST) method in computation of non-Newtonian fluid flow and heat transfer with moving boundaries", has been accepted by Comput. Mech.; The work "The role of finite displacements in vocal fold modeling", has been accepted by J. Biomech. Eng.

• June: The work "Role of mass on the stability of flag/flags in uniform flow", has been accepted by Appl. Phys. Lett. Figure 1 of this paper was selected as the cover picture of Vol 103, Issue 3. (Click this link for the full paper).

• June 04: I was awarded the AQL 2013 best paper.

• June 04-June 05: I went to Cincinnati for the AQL 2013 meeting.

• May: The work "Simulation of a pulsatile non-Newtonian flow past a stenosed 2D artery with atherosclerosis", has been accepted by Comput. Biol. Med.

• May: The collaboration between Otolaryngology and Mechanical Engineering has been highlighted by The Communicator which is an internal journal of Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center. In addition, my work on "A 3D Numerical Simulation of Wave Propogation on the Vocal Fold Surface", which received the 10th International Conference on Advances in Quantitative Laryngology, Voice and Speech Research (AQL) Best Paper Award, has been reported.

• May: The work "On numerical modeling of animal swimming and flight", has been accepted by Comput. Mech.

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