Dr Lu Tian

PhD, MEng, BEng

  • Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Energy-Conversion Technologies
  • Departmental Director of Doctoral Programme
Lu Tian

Background:

Lu received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London in 2018, supported by the prestigious Imperial College President’s Scholarship. Prior to her appointment as a Lecturer in Sustainable Transport Technologies at 色狗导航 in 2022, she worked as a Research Associate at Imperial College London on a range of projects funded by UK Research Councils and industrial partners, including Rolls-Royce plc and Toyota Motor Europe. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Energy-Conversion Technologies in 2026.

Her research focuses on turbulence-chemistry interactions in turbulent flames, emission mitigation of alternative fuels (including soot and NO鈧�), flame synthesis of nanomaterials, and hybrid RANS-LES modelling, with recent interests in metal fuels. In 2024, Lu was awarded the Hinshelwood Prize by the Combustion Institute British Section (CIBS), the highest honour for an early-career member (within 10 years of PhD). She is the first Asian woman and the second Asian recipient in the award’s 20+ year history. Lu is also an Honorary Lecturer at Imperial College London.

Lu welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students and is happy to support scholarship applications (e.g., CSC scholarships) and independent postdoctoral fellowships, including Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships. Please send your CV to: l.tian@lboro.ac.uk

Qualifications:

  • PhD 2018, Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK.
    • Thesis title: "The impact of pressure fluctuation and scalar dissipation rate closures in turbulent flames"
  • MEng (Hons) 2013, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
  • BEng 2010, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
  • PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Distinction) 2024, 色狗导航, UK.
  • Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), Advanced HE, 2024.

Key awards and accomplishments:

  • Hinshelwood Prize (the highest honour for a Combustion Institute British Section within 10 years of PhD), 2024
  • Osborne Reynolds Award Finalist (the best PhD research in fluid mechanics in UK), 2019
  • Outstanding Chinese Non-Government-Funded PhD award (one of the only two awardees from Imperial College in that year), 2018-2019
  • Imperial College President’s PhD Scholarship, 2014-2018
  • National Scholarship for Postgraduates, 2012
  • Best Undergraduate Thesis awarded by Tongji University, 2010

Outline of main research interests:

  • Combustion performance of alternative fuels
    • Reduction of NOx for ammonia combustion
    • Stability of hydrogen combustion
    • Impact of low Damköhler number effects
  • Flame synthesis of nanomaterials
    • Prediction of multiple nanoparticle characteristics
    • Optimisation (ML) of operating conditions for tailor-made nanoparticles
    • Applications in renewable fuel production and anodes for Lithium-ion batteries.
  • Soot formation in turbulent/laminar flames
    • Accurate prediction of PSDs in turbulent/laminar flames
    • Reduction of soot formation via ammonia addition
    • Soot formation at elevated pressures
  • Metal fuel simulations
    • The impact of impurities in metal oxidation
  • Lithium battery thermal runaway AI-assisted prediction
  • Interactions between turbulence and chemistry (Transported PDF method, MMC)

Grants and contracts:

  • 2026, PI: Lithium-Ion Battery Thermal Runaway-Multi-Scale Simulations and AI-Assisted Modelling, funded by the Royal Society Kan Tong Po Fellowship (in collaboration with Prof Peng Zhang from City University of Hong Kong).
  • 2025-29, PI: , funded by EPSRC-Caterpillar Inc. (EnerHy).
  • 2025-26, PI: Turbulent Cracked Ammonia Combustion for Low-Carbon Energy Conversion Technologies, Young Investigator Award and Short-Term Scientific Mission, EU Cost Action, CYPHER.
  • 2023-25, PI: , funded by EPSRC-Bosch.
  • 2025-28, PI: Recyclable Energy Generation - Characterisation of Metal Fuel Combustion, funded by China Scholarship Council (CSC)-色狗导航 scholarship.
  • 2017, Dean’s Fund, Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London.

Research Groups:

Current teaching responsibilities:

  • TTB209 Fixed Wing and Rotary Wing Aircraft Performance (Module Leader)
  • TTB101 Incompressible Aerodynamics (Module Leader)
  • Supervision of BEng, MEng, and MSc Final Year Projects

Current administrative responsibilities:

  • Departmental Director of Doctoral Programmes
  • Member of AACME R&I committee and EDI committee
  • Personal and Placement Tutor

Selected publications:

  • Qiu J, Tian L, Spencer A and Lindstedt RP (2025). Sectional modelling of TiO2 particle size distribution and crystallinity in burner-stabilised stagnation flames, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 41: 105855 DOI: .
  • Tian L, Wandel AP, and Lindstedt RP (2025). Transported PDF and MMC modelling of local extinction in turbulent piloted NH3/H2/N2-air jet flames, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 41: 105843 DOI:
  • Tian L, Lindstedt RP (2023). The impact of ammonia addition on soot formation in ethylene flames, Combustion and Flame, 258: 112724 DOI: .
  • Greenblatt D, Tian L, and Lindstedt RP (2023). The impact of hydrogen substitution by ammonia on low- and high-temperature combustion, Combustion and Flame, 257: 112733 DOI: .
  • Tian L, Lindstedt RP (2023). On the impact of differential diffusion between soot and gas phase species in turbulent flames, Combustion and Flame, 251:112684 DOI: .
  • Tian L, Boyette WR, Lindstedt RP, et al. (2022). Transported JPDF modelling and measurements of soot at elevated pressures, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 39 DOI: .
  • Simatos P, Tian L, Lindstedt RP (2021). The impact of molecular diffusion on auto-ignition in a turbulent flow, Combustion and Flame, 239: 111665 DOI: .
  • Tian L, Schiener MA, Lindstedt RP (2021). Fully coupled sectional modelling of soot particle dynamics in a turbulent diffusion flame, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 38(1): 1365-1373. DOI: .
  • Tian L, Lindstedt RP (2019). Impact of molecular mixing and scalar dissipation rate closures on turbulent bluff-body flames with increasing local extinction, Combustion and Flame, 206: 51-67. DOI:
  • Tian L, Lindstedt RP (2019). Evaluation of reaction progress variable - Mixture fraction statistics in partially premixed flames, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 37: 2241-2248 DOI: .
  • Tian L, Lindstedt RP (2017). The impact of dilatation, scrambling, and pressure transport in turbulent premixed flames, Combustion Theory and Modelling, 21: 1114-1147. DOI: .

 

 

External Collaborators:

Academic institutions

  • Imperial College London
  • City University of Hong Kong
  • King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
  • University of Stuttgart
  • Sheffield University
  • The DLR (German Aerospace Centre)
  • Cardiff University
  • Princeton University
  • University College London
  • Cambridge University
  • Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Science

Industry:

  • Caterpillar
  • Siemens Energy
  • Bosch

External roles and appointments:

  • Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London (2022-current).
  • Committee Member of the Combustion Physics Group, Institute of Physics (2022-current).
  • Committee Member of the Combustion (2025-current)
  • Member of Women’s Engineering Society