About Me

My name is Chen Cui (in Chinese, 崔忱).

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University of Virginia. My research lies at the intersection of plasma physics, space engineering, and high-performance computing. My work focuses on the high-fidelity, fully kinetic modeling of plasma dynamics in spacecraft electric propulsion thrusters, solar wind, and other applications related to low-temperature plasmas. I am the primary developer of Vlasolver, a large-scale, parallelized framework for fully kinetic plasma modeling.

I received my Ph.D. in Astronautical Engineering from the University of Southern California, where I also completed my Master’s degree in High-Performance Computing. I earned my Bachelor’s degree from Beihang University in 2017. I was a visiting undergraduate student at TU Dresden in Germany during 2016-2017 winter semester.

My research interests mainly focus on:

Kinetic modeling of plasma flow/physics, applications include: spacecraft electric propulsion modeling, space plasma turbulence/instability, low temperature plasma devices.
Computational plasma physics: development of grid-based Vlasov method algorithm and code.
High-performance computing.

My education background:

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) in Astronautical Engineering
- 08.2017-07.2023
- University of Southern California (USC), Viterbi School of Engineering
- Advisor: Prof. Joseph Wang
M.S. (Master of Science) in Computer Science (High-performance Computing)
- 08.2019-05.2021
- University of Southern California (USC), Viterbi School of Engineering
M.S. (Master of Science) in Astronautical Engineering
- 08.2017-12.2019
- University of Southern California (USC), Viterbi School of Engineering
B.E. (Bachelor of Engineering) in Aerospace Engineering
- 09.2013-06.2017
- Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Shenyuan Honors College

Please see the tab Research for my research details. You can also find my publications in the tab Publications.