PNNL

Chandru Dhandapani has a BTech in aerospace engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He then received his MS and PhD in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where Dhandapani worked on computational fluid dynamics analysis of the interactions of turbulence and chemistry. He worked on simulations of shear turbulence and turbulent flames, with particular focus on turbulence modeling and chemistry modeling. Dhandapani then worked as a postdoc at Caltech, collaborating with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on large eddy simulations (LES) of turbulence and chemistry in hybrid rocket motors. Dhandapani also worked at Stabilis Inc., where he applied machine learning on large data from accelerometer, magnetometer, and GPS observations.

Dhandapani started work at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as a post-doctorate research associate in 2022, working on LES of marine stratocumulus clouds, to study aerosol–cloud interactions for marine cloud brightening. This included development and evaluation of aspects of PINACLES, an in-house LES solver, and running multiple LES instances and large data analysis of the simulation results. He also contributed to development and evaluation of the Energy Research and Forecasting (ERF) LES model and the Simple Cloud-Resolving E3SM Atmosphere Model (SCREAM), which is a global circulation model. Dhandapani is currently working on radiation convection equilibrium simulations using the doubly periodic (DP) LES model DP-SCREAM and bridging the gap between cloud chamber observations and global models using cloud-resolved PINACLES simulations.

In his free time, Dhandapani also dabbles in movie trivia, improvisational comedy, and contemporary dance.

• Climate Modeling
• Data Analysis
• Software Development and Evaluation
• Computational Fluid Dynamics – LES and GCM
• Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

• Large Eddy Simulations
• Global Climate Models
• Python, C++, Fortran, GitLab, GitHub
• High-Performance Computing
• Machine Learning
• Atmospheric Modeling
• Turbulence Modeling
• Aerosol–Cloud Interactions

• PhD in Aeronautics, California Institute of Technology
• MS in Aeronautics, California Institute of Technology
• BTech in Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras

• American Geophysical Union
• American Meteorological Society

• Caltech Graduate Dean's Award, 2019
• Resnick Graduate Fellowship, 2017
• Rolf D. Beuhler award, 2015

Google Scholar Link

2025

• Dhandapani, C., Kaul, C. M, Pressel, K. G., et al. (2025). Sensitivities of Large Eddy Simulations of Aerosol Plume Transport and Cloud Response. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 17(2), 004546 

2023

• Dhandapani, C., Blanquart, G., Karp, A. C., Jens, E. T., Rabinovitch, J. (2023). Combustion Studies of MMA/GOx for a Hybrid Rocket Motor. Combustion and Flame, 256, p. 112994

2020

• Dhandapani, C., Rabinovitch, J., & Blanquart, G. (2020). Combustion Studies of MMA/GOx for a Hybrid Rocket Motor. AIAA Aviation 2020 Forum, p. 3280
• Dhandapani, C. & Blanquart, G. (2020). From isotropic turbulence in triply periodic cubic domains to sheared turbulence with inflow/outflow. Physical Review Fluids, 5(12), 124605
• Dhandapani, C., Rah, K. J., & Blanquart, G. (2019). Effective forcing for direct numerical simulations of the shear layer of turbulent free shear flows. Physical Review Fluids, 4(8), 084606
• Rah, K. J., Dhandapani, C., & Blanquart, G. (2018). Derivation of a realistic forcing term to reproduce the turbulent characteristics of round jets on the centerline. Physical Review Fluids, 3(8), 084606