Mario Valero Pérez
Department of Fluid Mechanics
Dr. Valero graduated in Aerospace Engineering (5-year program) from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in 2013. He subsequently completed an MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and an MSc degree in STEM Higher Education at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. In 2019, he defended his PhD thesis on wildfire behavior characterization at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, for which he has received several national and international awards. After graduating, Dr. Valero has worked as a Data Scientist at One Concern (California, USA) and as an Assistant Professor of Meteorology at San Jose State University (California, USA).
Teaching
Dr. Valero has taught a variety of highly technical courses to undergraduate and graduate students of Meteorology, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering in Spain and USA. Taught courses include Transport Phenomena, Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer, Fluid Engineering, Fire Safety Engineering, Wildfire in the Earth System, Remote Sensing, Numerical Methods, Applied Statistics, and Thermal and Fluid Dynamic Power Generation.
In addition to in-person teaching, Dr. Valero has extensive experience in remote and on-line learning, both synchronous and asynchronous. He currently leads a teaching innovation project and he is committed to training, coaching, and supporting students.
Research
Dr. Valero’s research focuses on thermofluid-dynamics, specifically on fire science and the study of fire behavior, including both enclosure and wildland fires. Fire behavior analysis and modeling requires the detailed characterization of numerous multiphysics and multiscale coupled phenomena. Measuring all these phenomena simultaneously with the required level of detail is virtually impossible, whereas resolving all required spatial and temporal scales is computationally unfeasible.
These challenges provide a fun and exciting playground to test and develop some of the most advanced methods available at present in science and engineering. Dr. Valero’s current main line of research focuses on the development of remote sensing, data science, and data-driven modeling techniques to measure and predict fire behavior. Other active areas of research include the characterization of model uncertainties, the optimization of multi-physics CFD models and the use of multifidelity schemes to speed up Monte-Carlo modeling strategies built upon physics-based high-fidelity models.
Dr. Valero currently maintains research collaborations with multiple academic institutions in Europe and USA. He is part of the European Network on Extreme Fire Behavior COST Action and he participates in the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE), an international interdisciplinary collaborative effort led by the US Forest Service. He also collaborates with NASA and NOAA in wildfire monitoring campaigns in the US.
Numerical Simulation and COMSOL Multiphysics
Dr. Valero’s expertise on multiphysics modeling is primarily related to reactive flows in the context of fire science and engineering as well as multi-phase atmospheric dynamics. Furthermore, he has research experience in the development of plasma flow models for space propulsion applications.