Personal Summary

My research interests include the analysis of pulsatile flow for the mechanical separation of gases and biological species.  Separations of gas mixtures on the macro scale using pulsatile flow is analyzed using mathematical models and experimental verification.  Flows in various geometrical configurations, such as wavy-walled tubes are examined to determine their effectiveness in separation processes.  On the microscale, different sized ssDNA are separated using a pulsatile electroosmotic flow to integrate into future Lab-on-a-Chip systems.  The relative time and length scales for the separations are important to give good resolutions with high throughput.

As the Director of Indigenous Research and STEM Education, the education of Native American and Alaska Native students from Kindergarten through graduate school is one of the goals of the program.

Education

Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, 2001, University of Florida.

B.S., Chemical Engineering, 1996, Stanford University.

Courses Taught

EGEN 101 Introduction to Engineering

Teaching Experience

2001 - 2007 Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, University of Idaho

2007 - 2012 Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering, University of Idaho

Selected Publications

John Whetten, Aaron Thomas, The study of oscillating flow separation using multiple wavy-walled tubes, Sep. Sci. Tech., in press.

Aaron M. Thomas, Aashika Jain, The effect of pulsatile flows on the transport across membranes: An analytical and experimental study, Sep. Sci. Tech., 42.9, p. 1931 – 1944, 2007.

A. Thomas, G. Thich, R. Narayanan, Low Reynolds number flow in a channel with oscillating wavy-walls: An analytical study.  Chem. Eng. Sci., 61, p. 6047, 2006.

                  A. Thomas, R. Narayanan, A comparison between the enhanced mass transfer in boundary and pressure driven pulsatile flow. Int. J. Heat and Mass Transfer, 45, p. 4057, 2002.

                  A. Thomas and R. Narayanan, The use of pulsatile flow to separate species, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 974, p. 42, 2002.

A. Thomas, R. Narayanan, Periodic flow and its effects on the mass transfer of a system and separation of species, Physics of Fluids, 13, p. 859, 2001.