Researcher Spotlight


Dr. Pengfei Xue

Assistant Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering


Pengfei Xue Dr. Xue’s research group focuses on the development of hydrodynamic model and its application to advancing our understanding of multi-scaled hydrodynamic processes of the Great Lakes and coastal oceans, and their impacts on coastal communities. Recently, advanced next-generation, Great Lakes numerical, hydrodynamic model has been developed at the Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC) at Michigan Tech, utilizing the supercomputer Superior, including a coupled (at the Straits of Mackinac) Lakes Michigan-Huron model as well as three models for Lake Superior, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

The unstructured-grid Finite Volume Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM) model has the capability to resolve the nearshore regions of the Great Lakes in sufficient detail to determine the general flow conditions at previously unprecedented resolution in both the horizontal and vertical. This level of hydrodynamic predictive capacity is critical for our understanding of hydrodynamics and its impact on our ecosystem.

Dr. Xue's ongoing research includes using these high-resolution Great Lake models to investigate the impact of mesoscale meteorological forcing on the thermal structure and circulations in the Great Lakes; to predict dispersal paths of contaminants, nutrients into the lakes; to simulate the water conditions that influence the proliferation of invasive species. His previous research efforts on coastal oceans include estuarine and coastal ocean circulation, dynamics of coupled ocean-atmosphere model.

For more information, please visit Dr. Xue's Numerical Modeling Lab.