Dr. Xianming (Simon) Dai
- Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
- Fellow, Eugene McDermott Distinguished Professor
The McDermott Professorships were established in August 2017, funded by an anonymous gift, with the goal of providing early career support and recognition to faculty members who have established extraordinary records of research productivity, teaching excellence and university service, and who show promise of being leaders of the UT Dallas faculty in the future.
“UT Dallas has provided an exceptional environment with outstanding students and colleagues, laying the foundation for me to start my academic career. I am deeply grateful to my students, postdocs and collaborators, who have contributed to every success of our research in advanced packaging, energy and water.”
Dr. Xianming (Simon) Dai looks to nature to find solutions to challenges such as water scarcity.
In one example of his bioinspired research, Dai developed a slippery surface based on the mechanisms that rice leaves and pitcher plants use to collect water.
The research is part of Dai’s work to design surfaces to collect water without requiring external energy. One of his goals is to develop portable technology that can harvest water from moisture in the air. He says the technology also could be applied to environments that require humidity control.
Dai’s research interests include heat transfer, nanofabrication, surface science, microfluidics, thermal management and water sustainability.
As part of their work to develop new surfaces to collect and rapidly shed condensate, Dai and his team of researchers discovered a phenomenon in which microdroplets on one of their novel surfaces propelled themselves without external force to climb into larger droplets, forming droplets large enough for harvesting. The team also developed a new theory to explain how advanced surfaces remove condensates, which he said will guide the development of new technologies.
Dai has received numerous honors, including a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award in 2023 to support his research to prevent 3D integrated circuits from overheating. In addition, Dai was awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award in 2021, an Army Research Office Young Investigator Award in 2019, an Outstanding Early Career Award at the 2021 micro Flow and Interfacial Phenomena Conference, and an Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science faculty research award in 2022.
Dai joined UT Dallas in 2016 after working as a postdoctoral researcher at The Pennsylvania State University.
Dai earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina, a Master of Science in thermal engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and a Bachelor of Science in thermal energy and power engineering from Chongqing University.