People

Renkun Chen

Professor, UC San Diego
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Materials Science and Engineering Program
Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley, 2008
B.S. in Engineering Thermo-Physics, Tsinghua University, China, 2004

Prof. Renkun Chen joined the UCSD faculty in November 2009. Prior to joining UCSD, Chen did his doctoral work in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley from 2004-2008 and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, both working with Prof. Arun Majumdar

Office: Room 261, EBU-II
Tel: 858-822-7980 (O)
Email:rkchen@ucsd.edu

Yu Pei

Postdoctoral Scholar
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCSD
Yu is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the group, after obtaining her PhD degree in summer 2024. Yu joined the group in Fall 2019 as a PhD student. She obtained a B.S. in Thermal Engineering at Northeastern University (China) in 2016 and a M.S. in Engineering Thermo-physics at University of Since and Technology of China in 2019.

Sarath R. Adapa

Postdoctoral Scholar
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCSD
Sarath is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the group, after obtaining his PhD degree in Spring 2025. Sarath joined the group in Fall 2019 as an MS student and became a PhD student in Spring 2021. He obtained a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (India) in 2019.

Tianshi Feng

PhD Student
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCSD
Tianshi Joined the group in Fall 2018 as an MS student and became aPhD student in 2020. He obtained his BS degree in Alternative Energy Science and Engineering at Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China) in 2018. Tianshi is mainly working on devices for electronic and personal cooling.

Yuki Akura

Visiting PhD Student
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCSD
Yuki is a visiting Ph.D. student from Kyoto University, Japan. He joined the group in June 2025. He received his B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering in 2022 and his M.Eng. in Thermal Engineering in 2024, both from Kyoto University. His research background is in nanoscale thermal transport, and he is currently working on evaporation-based cooling systems at UCSD.

Duy Cao

MS Student
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCSD
Duy joined the group in Winter 2025 as an undergraduate student. He is currently a Master's student after receiving his BS in Spring 2025.