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

EDUCATION
     University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
     Doctor of Philosophy, Geophysics and Space Physics
     Dissertation: “Characterizing convection in geophysical dynamo systems”

     University of Chicago, 2009
     Bachelors of Arts, Physics

RESEARCH AREAS
Free convection
Magnetohydrodynamics
Rotating flows
Geophysical fluid dynamics

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
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)

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

• 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.
• Stellmach, S., Lischper, M., Julien, K., Vasil, G., Cheng, J.S., Ribeiro, A., & Aurnou, J.M. (2014) Approaching the Asymptotic Regime of Rapidly Rotating Convection: Boundary Layers versus Interior Dynamics. Physical Review Letters, 113, 254501.