Faculty Spotlight: Nathaniel Wei
In our Faculty Spotlight series, we feature a Q&A with Nathaniel Wei, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics in SEAS, where he directs the AWARE Lab (Aerodynamics, Wind, And Renewable Energy).
By Stuti Mankodi
Nathaniel J. Wei is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he directs the AWARE Lab (Aerodynamics, Wind, And Renewable Energy). His group studies how winds move through cities and across wind farms, then turns those insights into practical designs that make renewable energy more efficient and urban spaces cooler and healthier. By combining fluid mechanics with creative, low-cost measurement techniques, such as tracking bubbles with cameras and decoding patterns on a kinetic art wall, Wei’s work helps us “see the wind,” improve wind-turbine performance and durability, and bring street-level airflow data into planning for air quality, heat, and resilience.
What do you and the AWARE Lab study—and why does it matter?
We study wind and how it affects engineering systems. Part of the lab looks at wind turbines, especially how gusts (not steady breezes) change performance and wear. If we design for these more realistic wind conditions, turbines can make more power and last longer, which lowers costs. For example, we’ve shown that letting a floating offshore turbine gently rock with wind and waves can boost output by about 5–6% compared to holding it perfectly still. These small gains add up at wind-farm scale.
What about cities? How does wind behave urban environments?
Cities make wind complicated. Buildings funnel air down some streets, create calm pockets on others, and the urban heat island pumps warm air upward, driving local circulations. Weather shifts can flip these patterns over the span of an afternoon. Our best climate and weather models often treat a whole neighborhood like one “point” on a grid—imagine everything inside a one-kilometer square averaged into a single value. That’s fine for big-picture forecasting, but it misses street-level details like gusts in a corridor or trapped heat on a block. We’re trying to fill that blind spot with measurements where people actually live and breathe.
If wind is invisible, how do you “see” and measure it?
Traditional wind sensors give precise data at single spots—useful but expensive and sparse. We are exploring low-cost, creative methods to see motion over space and time. One is soap bubbles tracked by cameras; bubbles drift with the air, so their paths reveal the three-dimensional flow. We’re also partnering with Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, which has a 20-meter long kinetic façade made of tiny aluminum panels designed by artist Ned Kahn. As wind flows past, the panels shimmer in patterns. By filming and decoding those motions, we can turn public art into a giant wind sensor: a way for everyone to literally see the air move.
How did you get into this work—and what’s “fluid mechanics” in one line?
My interest in aerodynamics was sparked by the flight of birds – particularly watching the graceful landings of thousands of migrating sandhill cranes on the plains of Nebraska. That led me to fluid mechanics, which is simply the study of how liquids and gases move. Air and water look different, but they follow similar laws; the swirls in a bathtub are cousins of the invisible swirls around buildings or turbine blades. I’ve tried to channel that wonder into research that also helps people—cleaner air, cooler streets, and cheaper renewable energy.
What can your measurements change, beyond wind farms? And how can students get involved?
Street-level wind maps can guide cooler urban design (identifying which areas breezes really reach), air-quality justice (how plumes travel to vulnerable neighborhoods), and tree/vent placement that actually works. We are developing low-cost sensing approaches and hope to eventually deploy them with community partners in under-resourced areas that suffer from extreme heat and poor air quality. Students can jump in through field work, data analysis, sensor prototyping, or community projects. We are currently planning to teach local middle-school students to measure air flow in their own classrooms using soap bubbles, in partnership with the Netter Center.
Students could enroll in two classes that I teach in these areas: “Energy Systems, Resources, and Technology” (ENGR 2500), an introductory survey course on energy science, and “Wind Physics and Applications” (MEAM 5480), a graduate-level course on the atmosphere and wind energy. The AWARE Lab website now has an Openings page where students can find out how get involved in my lab.
Further Reading:
AWARE Lab website
Nathan Wei on Renewable Energy, Fluid Mechanics and the Shaping of Humble Engineers
Penn Engineering Today 9/24/2024
Andlinger Center Fellow will analyze atmospheric dynamics for wind energy
Princeton Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering 10/13/2023
Near-wake structure of full-scale vertical-axis wind turbines
Cambridge University Press 03/05/2021