Weixuan Li

Weixuan Li is a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering whose work seeks to improve parameterizations of surface heterogeneity for atmospheric boundary layer flows over complex terrain. Weather and climate models cannot resolve fine-scale surface features like buildings and vegetation, instead representing their effects through effective roughness parameterizations. She uses large-eddy simulations in PadeOps to investigate how spatially varying roughness influences turbulent flow properties. To support these simulations, Weixuan develops MATLAB scripts generating spatially varying roughness-length fields as inputs to LES simulations and uses MATLAB for post-processing large datasets, including visualization of velocity and turbulence statistics, comparison with log-law benchmarks, and sensitivity analysis. MATLAB also serves as a flexible platform for prototyping and testing numerical methods within her Fortran-based simulation workflows. As a MathWorks Fellow, she will develop modular MATLAB-based frameworks for constructing and analyzing rough surface parameterizations and create standardized post-processing toolkits for the CFD community. This work could improve atmospheric flow prediction while providing accessible computational tools for research and education.