People who do the work.

Principal Investigator

Mustafa Usta, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering – Cleveland State University

Dr. Usta earned his bachelor’s degree from Yildiz Technical University (Turkey) in 2012, and master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Lehigh University in 2016 and 2018 respectively, all in mechanical engineering. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Cleveland State University as an Assistant Professor in 2022 and has been an Affiliate Faculty in the Departments of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering since 2023.

Dr. Usta directs the Complex Flows and Advanced Transport Lab. His research develops the transport physics of flow-responsive systems – where flow actively reorganizes the medium through which it moves – spanning biological flows, turbulent mixing, membrane separation, and reactive surfaces. Working at disciplinary intersections by design, his group combines high-fidelity computation and scientific machine learning to build the physical frameworks governing how flow history shapes macromolecular activation, cellular damage, surface-mediated separation, and mixing in complex environments ranging from physiological to high-speed compressible flows. His research is supported by the Department of Energy and draws on experimental collaborators across biomedical engineering, materials science, national laboratories, and industry partners.