Arnaldo Rodriguez-Gonzalez

Ph.D. Candidate
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics

390 Kimball Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
Email: ajr295 (at) cornell (dot) edu

Biography

Arnaldo began his graduate studies at Cornell in Fall 2016 and joined the Micro/Nanofluidics Laboratory in October of that year. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, where he completed a capstone project on the hydrodynamics of dense colloidal suspensions with Hewlett-Packard. As an undergraduate, he worked on multiple research projects, such as modeling thermal control systems for LIGO’s gravitational-wave detectors, modeling liquid xenon hydrodynamics for the XENON dark matter detector, and modeling thermoelectric superconducting magnet phenomena for both Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Research Interests

Arnaldo’s research interests involve developing mathematical frameworks for understanding the physics of fluid mechanics at the micro- and nanoscale, particularly when complex multiphysical phenomena emerge (e.g. electrohydrodynamics) and when traditionally fundamental assumptions in fluid dynamics break down (no-slip condition, local thermodynamic equilibrium, etc.).

Publications

• Rodriguez‐Gonzalez, A., Gleghorn, J. P., Kirby, B. J., Rational Design Protocols for Size-Based Particle Sorting Microdevices Using Symmetry-Induced Cyclical Dynamics. Physical Review E 2020, 101, 032125. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.032125
• Liu, X., Qi, G., Park, A. M. G., Rodriguez‐Gonzalez, A., Enotiadis, A., Pan, W. Y., Kosma, V., Fuchs, G. D., Kirby, B. J., Giannelis, E. P., Scalable Synthesis of Switchable Assemblies of Gold Nanorod Lyotropic Liquid Crystal Nanocomposites. Small 2019, 1901666. https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201901666

Current Research

Current work involves modeling nonlinear interactions between colloidal particles and periodic obstacle lattices with the goal of arbitrarily manipulating colloidal suspensions in micro-scale flows by applying mathematical tools from group theory, as well as applying tools from functional analysis and approximation theory to generate a design algorithm for such suspension “filters”.

Talks/Presentations

• Modernist Motion: Symbolic Dynamics as a Tool for 21st Century Science, Cornell Applied Dynamics Seminar (delivered online), May 2020.
• Invariance as Information: Exploiting Symmetries in Mathematical Models, SiGMA Seminar, November 2018.
• Manipulating Colloidal Particle Dynamics in Microfluidic Channels with Particle-Obstacle Interactions, Cornell Fluids Seminar, February 2018.
• Open Problems in Theoretical Mechanics: A Bird’s Eye View, SiGMA Seminar, October 2017.
• Microscale Fluid Mechanics: Concepts and Innovations, Summer STEM Colloquium, August 2017.

Honors and Awards

• 2021 & 2019, H. D. Block Teaching Prize
• 2016, Cornell Sloan Fellowship
• 2015, UPR-Mayagüez Honor Roll (top 5% of class)
• 2010, Rafael Carrión Jr. Academic Excellence Award

Education

B.S. (2015) University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, mechanical engineering (magna cum laude), minor in applied mathematics.

Miscellaneous

I wrote a free text on introductory fluid mechanics titled Commentary on Fluid Mechanics, which you can find here.