Principal Investigator

Dr. Ali Tohidi is a fire and fluid dynamicist serving as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a Co-PI of the NSF-IUCRC Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC) at San Jose State University (SJSU). Dr. Tohidi obtained his M.Sc. degree from the Sharif University of Technology, where he worked on the effects of wind-induced surface cooling on water circulation and transport in aquatic canopies. He then received his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Clemson University, where he studied wildfire spread mechanisms. Later, he held a Postdoctoral Scholar position in Fire Protection Engineering Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. He worked on the combustion-induced thermo-mechanical failure of cellular solids and dynamics of fire whirls, an extreme fire behavior. Dr. Tohidi’s research and development interests converge at the nexus of experimental, data-driven, and mathematical modeling of complex thermo-fluids systems across various spatial and temporal scales. His current efforts focus on understanding the physics of wildfire spread and developing new models to describe wildfire behavior and impacts throughout the landscape.

Group Members

Alumni

• Takoua Bejaoui
• Lauren Seto
• Antonio Cervantes
• Pranika Kakkar
• Venkat Prasanna Kumar
• Tom Nobal
• Kanishk Varun

• Ayush Nair

• Natalia Vega Krutzfeldt
• Felix Ohlgart
• Khoa Cao