Chemical Engineering

My work centres around the development of understanding and mathematical models for complex multiphase flow patterns to tackle various industrial problems like cleaning, oil-gas transport, slurry transport, distillation, absorption, thermal management of microdevices and biological problems such as cerebral temperature regulation and lung function.

PhD, Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, 2004

• Thesis Title: Multiphase Fluid Dynamics in Structured Packing

• Member of American Association for Advancement of Science
• Member of American Physical Society
• Member of Indian Society for Surface Science Technologists
• Associate Member of IChemE

• Fluid Mechanics 4 (Chemical) CHEE10004
• Chemical Engineering Industrial Project 5 CHEE11014
• Chemical Engineering Research Project 5 CHEE11017
• Chemical Engineering Study Project 4 CHEE10009
• Chemical Engineering Design Projects 4 CHEE10002
• Chemical Engineering 1 Laboratory CHEE08001
• Chemical Engineering in Practise 3 CHEE09006

• Transport phenomena (e.g. phase change, reaction-diffusion transport)
• Multiphase (& single phase) fluid dynamics: Development of numerical (CFD/DNS) and analytical (stability theory) tools (e.g. oil-gas-solid pipeline flows, industrial cleaning and fouling)
• Biological fluid dynamics (e.g. brain temperature mapping, arterial flows, enzymatic kinetics)

• Head of Graduate School (2018 - present)
• Deputy Head of Graduate School (2016 - present)
• Acting Deputy Head of Graduate School (2015 - 2016)

https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/weili-group/

I joined the University of Edinburgh (UoE) in 2021 as a Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering. I studied chemical engineering at the Nanjing University of Technology, obtaining a BEng with Highest Distinction in 2003 and PhD in 2008. In the last year of my PhD, my first employment started at The University of Hong Kong (Department of Chemistry). The next position was at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Department of Physics) from 2010 to 2013 a. Early 2013, I moved to the University of Liverpool (Department of Physics) and assisted to set up a new research group. Before I joined UoE, I had a four-month spell working in the National Graphene Institute, University of Manchester, and five-year experience as Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, Aston University.

2016 Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching for Higher Education in the UK. 2003-2008 Nanjing University of Technology (NJUT), PhD in Chemical Engineering. 1999-2003 NJUT, BEng (1st Honours) in Chemical Engineering.

IChemE, RSC, EPSRC Associate Peer Review College

Chemical Engineering Design 4 (CHEE10010) - Course Organiser

Supervising students' projects in various chemical engineering courses: Study Project 4, Research Project 5, etc.

1. Over 10 years’ expertise in nanomaterials, photocatalysis, greenhouse gas removal, reaction engineering, electrochemistry and physical chemistry. 2. Extensive practices on preparation and characterization of nanomaterials, design and evaluation of photocatalytic reactions/photoreactors, antimicrobial properties of nanomaterials. 3. Leading multidisciplinary projects involving both academic and industral resources, comprehensive collaboration and interpersonal skills in a team environment. 4. Skills in electron microscopy, time-resolved spectroscopy, thermal analysis, chromatography, atomic force microscopy, X-ray crystallography and synchrotron radiation spectroscopy

https://suspromgroup.eng.ed.ac.uk/

Maria Grazia De Angelis is a Full Professor of Chemical Engineering Principles at the University of Bologna and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (UK), where she leads the SusProm Group. Her research is dedicated to the design of products (biodegradable packaging, selective membranes) and sustainable processes (CO₂ capture, water purification, wearable hemodialysis). She is currently engaged in integrating various theories, including AI, to enhance the capability of designing materials for separation.

She is the Chair of the Working Party on Thermodynamic and Transport Properties of the European Federation of Chemical Engineers (2022-2028). She was the Vice President of the European Membrane Society (2019-23). She is a co-author of more than 100 publications in international journals in the field of membrane science, thermodynamics, and computational material science (Google Scholar).

She has been a Researcher or Visiting Professor at

• University of Melbourne, Australia
• Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina
• National Technical University of Athens, Greece
• North Carolina State University, USA.

Go to the Group SusProM Website

• PhD in Chemical Engineering, 2002, University of Bologna
• Master Degree in Chemical Engineering, 1998, University of Bologna

• Chair of the Working Party on Thermodynamics and Transport Properties, European Federation of Chemical Engineers (EFCE) , 2022-present
• Treasurer and Vice President, European Membrane Society Council, 2019-2023
• Member of the Steering Committee of the Research Area " 

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)

• Molecular, multiscale and AI-enhanced modeling of materials with selective capacity (membranes, porous sorbents)
• Barrier and permeability properties testing
• CO₂ capture
• Water purification
• Hemodialysis
• Biodegradable packaging
• Hydrogen

Associate Member of IChemE Member of AIDIC (Italian Association of Chemical Engineering) Member of European Membrane Society Member of AIChE

-Member of the Editorial Board of Membranes and Fluid Phase Equilibria

-Editor of the Special Issue "Fundamentals of Transport in Polymers and Membranes—Honorary Issue for Professor Giulio C. Sarti" 2022

-Editor of the Special Issue "Gas Transport in Glassy Polymers" 2020-2021

-Watch my webinar “Membranes for CO₂ Capture: Thermodynamic aspects” given during the EFCE Spotlight Talks, December 3rd 2020. Organized by the European Federation of Chemical Engineers. -Host of the European Membrane Society Live Webinars Series, watch them on Youtube

Log jams - accumulations of floating wood in rivers - play a critical role in shaping fluvial landscapes, influencing flood dynamics, sediment transport, and aquatic ecosystems. Despite their ecological and hydraulic importance, we still lack a predictive, mechanistic understanding of how individual logs interact to form stable jams, how these structures resist or yield to flow, and how changes in geometry or hydrodynamic forcing drive transitions between clogging and release.

This project will address these questions using particle-based computational simulations of log jam formation and deformation under flow. You will develop and apply numerical tools to represent logs as interacting elongated particles within a fluid environment, capturing contact, friction, buoyancy, and hydrodynamic drag. By systematically varying log aspect ratio, size distribution, and flow conditions, you will identify the micro-mechanical origins of jam stability and quantify the conditions under which logs transition between mobile, jammed, and partially clogging states. Through this work, you will develop expertise in large-scale particle-based simulation, computational fluid dynamics, and the physics of granular and particulate systems.

You will learn to extract effective rheological and mechanical properties from microscale simulations, linking particle-scale processes to river-scale behaviour. The results will inform predictive models for log jam formation and stability, with implications for flood risk management, river restoration, and the design of nature-based engineering solutions.

This PhD project will be supervised by Dr Chris Ness (School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh) and will involve collaboration with academics from partner institutions.

Interested candidates are encouraged to contact the supervisor for more information (chris.ness@ed.ac.uk).

Website: https://christopherjness.github.io/

Contact: Dr Christopher John Ness(Chris.Ness@ed.ac.uk)

Minimum entry qualification- an Honours degree at 2:1 or above (or international equivalent) in a relevant science or engineering discipline, possibly supported by an MSc Degree

Further information on English language requirements for EU/Overseas applicants.

Applications are welcomed from self-funded students, or students who are applying for scholarships from the University of Edinburgh or elsewhere as well as self-funded students.

Funding may be available for an exceptional candidate. Link below for the further details.

Further information and other funding options.

Suspensions of particles in liquid are found throughout nature and industry, for instance slurries, mudslides, chocolate, toothpaste, and ceramics. Understanding their flow properties is crucial to characterising engineering processes and describing the natural world. We are just beginning to unravel the dramatic influence that stress-controlled particle-particle interactions have on the flow behaviour when the liquid is Newtonian and the particles are hard, spherical and roughly monosized [1].

In reality these conditions are rarely met: particles are usually irregular, being elongated and having a broad size distribution, while suspending liquids are often ‘viscoelastic’. A crucial scientific question is: how do the combined microphysics of these particle-level details control the resulting flow behaviour? For many scenarios in the natural world and in industry, answering this question is key to engineering design and natural hazard mitigation.

• You will address this question using predominantly computational means, developing expertise in particle-based simulation, high performance computing, and data analysis;
• You will become an expert in rheological characterisation of complex fluids;
• Building upon codes developed in Edinburgh, you will implement particle-shape models to simulate bulk flow of suspensions of elongated particles.
• You will develop post-processing techniques to generate viscosity and microstructural measurements;
• Your work will improve our fundamental understanding and guide constitutive model development.
• You will gain real-world experience by collaborating with our industrial partners on a contemporary engineering challenge.

This computational project is supervised by Dr Chris Ness (School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh) and will involve regular interaction with experimentalists from academia and industry.

Interested candidates may contact the supervisor for further information (chris.ness@ed.ac.uk).

Website: https://christopherjness.github.io/

Contact: Dr Christopher John Ness(Chris.Ness@ed.ac.uk)

You can read more about the scientific work of my group here: https://christopherjness.github.io/papers

[1] Ness, Christopher, Ryohei Seto, and Romain Mari. The physics of dense suspensions, Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 2022, 13:97-117 (https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031620-105938)

Minimum entry qualification- an Honours degree at 2:1 or above (or international equivalent) in a relevant science or engineering discipline, possibly supported by an MSc Degree

Further information on English language requirements for EU/Overseas applicants.

Applications are welcomed from self-funded students, or students who are applying for scholarships from the University of Edinburgh or elsewhere as well as self-funded students.

Funding may be available for an exceptional candidate. Link below for the further details.

Further information and other funding options.