Jonathan S. Cheng, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Mechanical & Nuclear Engineering Department
United States Naval Academy
590 Holloway Road
Annapolis, MD 21402-5042
(410) 293-6509
jcheng@usna.edu

• Doctor of Philosophy, Geophysics and Space Physics
• Dissertation: “Characterizing convection in geophysical dynamo systems”

• Bachelors of Arts, Physics

• Free convection
• Magnetohydrodynamics
• Rotating flows
• Geophysical fluid dynamics

• Assistant Professor, U.S. Naval Academy (Jul. 2023 – present)
• Visiting Lecturer, Rochester Institute of Technology (Jan. 2022 – Jun. 2023)
• Postdoctoral Associate, University of Rochester (Jul. 2019 – Oct. 2022)
• Postdoctoral Researcher, Eindhoven University of Technology (Jun. 2016 – Jun. 2019)

• Hawkins, E.K., Cheng, J.S., Abbate, J.A., Pilegard, T., Stellmach, S., Julien, K., Aurnou, J.M. (2023) Laboratory Models of Planetary Core-Style Convective Turbulence. Fluids, 8, 106.
• Cheng, J.S., Mohammad, I., Wang, B., Forer, J.M., & Kelley, D.H. (2022). Laboratory model of electrovortex flow with thermal gradients for liquid metal batteries. Experiments in Fluids, 63(11), 178.
• Cheng, J.S., Mohammad, I., Wang, B., Keogh, D., Forer, J., & Kelley, D.H. (2022). Oscillations of the large-scale circulation in experimental liquid metal convection at aspect ratios 1.4–3. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 949, A42.
• Grannan, A.M., Cheng, J.S., Aggarwal, A., Hawkins, E.K., Xu, Y., Horn, S., Sánchez-Álvarez, J., Aurnou, J.M. (2022). Experimental pub crawl from Rayleigh–Bénard to magnetostrophic convection. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 939, R1.
• Aguirre Guzmán, A.J., Madonia, M., Cheng, J.S., Ostilla-Mónico, R., Clercx, H.J.H., Kunnen, R.P.J. (2022) Flow- and temperature-based statistics characterizing the regimes in rapidly rotating turbulent convection in simulations employing no-slip boundary conditions. Physical Review Fluids, 7:1, 013501.
• Aguirre Guzmán, A.J., Madonia, M., Cheng, J.S., Ostilla-Mónico, R., Clercx, H.J.H., Kunnen, R.P.J. (2021) Force balance in rapidly rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 928, A16.
• Aguirre Guzmán, A.J., Madonia, M., Cheng, J.S., Ostilla-Mónico, R., Clercx, H.J.H., Kunnen, R.P.J. (2020) Competition between Ekman plumes and vortex condensates in rapidly rotating thermal convection. Physical Review Letters, 125:21, 214501.
• Cheng, J.S., Madonia, M., Aguirre Guzmán, A.J., Kunnen, R.P.J. (2020) Laboratory exploration of heat transfer regimes in rapidly rotating turbulent convection. Physical Review Fluids, 5:11, 113501.
• de Wit, X.M., Aguirre Guzmán, A.J., Madonia, M., Cheng, J.S., Clercx, H.J.H., Kunnen, R.P.J. (2020) Turbulent rotating convection confined in a slender cylinder: The sidewall circulation. Physical Review Fluids, 5:2, 023502.
• Cheng, J.S., Aurnou, J.M., Julien, K., Kunnen, R.P.J. (2018) A heuristic framework for next-generation models of geostrophic convective turbulence. Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics, 112:4, 277–300.
• Cheng, J.S., Aurnou, J.M. (2016) Tests of diffusion-free scaling behaviors in numerical dynamo data sets. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 436, 121–129.
• Aurnou, J.M., Calkins, M.A., Cheng, J.S., Julien, K., King, E.M., Nieves, D., Soderlund, K.M., Stellmach, S. (2015) Rotating Convective Turbulence in Earth and Planetary Cores. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 246, 52–71.
• Cheng, J.S., Stellmach, S., Ribeiro, A., Grannan, A., King, E.M., Aurnou, J.M. (2015) Laboratory-numerical models of rapidly rotating convection in planetary cores. Geophysical Journal International, 201, 1–17.