SPaRK Lab
who are we?
The mission of SPaRK Lab is to design novel synfuel/materials for aerospace propulsion systems. We are particularly interested in i) the AI-aided design of novel fuels/materials for advanced propulsion, ii) the reaction kinetics determining the oxidation/pyrolysis characteristics of fuels/materials, and iii) predicting the performance of novel materials/fuels in the propulsion systems using physics-based simulation.
Lab News
- 🚀 6/2025 - Sun City Summit Rocket team secured 2nd place at the International Rocket Engineering Competition!
- 🎤 6/2025 - Dr. Cho had an oral presentation at 13th International Conference on Chemical Kinetics in Tahoe City, CA.
"Kinetics of CH3CO Radical Reactions Initiated from Cl + Acetaldehyde" - 🚀 6/2025 - Dr. Cho and Sun City Summit Rocket team attend 2025 IREC compeition in Midland, TX.
- 🎤 6/2025 - Dr. Cho had an invited talk at Pukyung National University, Korea.
"Engineering Application of Cheminformatics - Rational Design of Alternative Fuel and Materials" - ✈️ 6/2025 - Dr. Cho attended AI+ Expo in Washington DC.
- 🏆 5/2025 - Ryan, Ramiro, and Victor received the SURPASS fellowship from UTEP COURI.
"Fabrication of nontoxic solid energetics for educational rocket motors using advanced manufacturing"
"Accelerating the Discovery of Energetic Polymeric Binders for Solid Rocket Motors Using Graph Neural Networks"
"Developing a Graph Neural Network Model for Early Detection of Chronic Ankle Instability: An Interdisciplinary Approach Integrating Kinesiology and Engineering" - 😎😎 5/2025 - Ramiro and Ryan joined SPaRK!
- 🎓 5/2025 - René successfully defended his MSc thesis! Congrats!
"De Novo Design of Ablative Polymers for Aerospace Thermal Protection Systems through an Intergrated AI-Theory-Experiment Approach" - 🏆 4/2025 - SPaRK Lab received an internal grant (PI: Dr. Kim from CivilE, Co-PI: Dr. Jang from Kinesiology, and Dr. Cho) from UTEP.
"AI-Driven Walking Feedback to Prevent the Early Onset of Knee Post-Traumatic Osteoarthritis in Patients After Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) Reconstruction" - 🚀 4/20252 - Sun City Summit Rocket team and Dr. Cho were highlighted in the UTEP NEWSFEED for their achievement in the Texas Lone Star Cup.
"UTEP Earns Top Prize at Premier Texas Rocketry Competition" - 🚀 4/2025 - Dr. Cho and the rocket team had 17 rocket launches for the National Association of Rocketry (NAR) L1&L2 certification as a part of the Senior Design Project class.
- 🎓 4/2025 - SPaRK's collaborative paper with Pusan National University is published in Energy!
"NOx Reduction in Hydrogen-Fueled Direct-Injected Spark Ignition (DISI) Engine Using Post-Injection Strategy: Experimental and Chemical Kinetics Approaches" - 🎤 4/2025 - Faihim had a poster presentation at UTEP GradExpo.
"Design of jet-stirred reactor for combustion kinetics study of polycycloalkanes as a key component in high performance aviation fuel" - 🎤 3/2025 - Dr. Cho visited the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM, and had a presentation.
"Modeling-AI Integration for High-Temperature Material Design" - 🚀 3/2025 - Sun City Summit Rocket team secured 1st place at the Lone Star Cup!
- 🏆 3/2025 - SPaRK was granted 67,200 node-hours (PI: Dr. Jang, Co-PI: Dr. Cho) from Texas Advanced Computing Center.
"Enhancing AI-Based Diagnosis of Chronic Ankle Instability Through Optimized Biomechanical Marker Selection" - 🔬3/2025 - SPaRK Lab secured a new laboratory within the Engineering Building.
- 🏆 3/2025 - SPaRK Lab received an external grant (PI: Dr. Cho, Co-PI: Dr. Kim, and Dr. Li from Civil Engineering) from the US Department of Transportation and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
"Digital Twin Modeling of NOx Formation from Transient Vehicle Operations in Hilly Terrains" - 🎤 3/2025 - Dr. Cho had four presentations at the 14th U.S. National Combustion Meeting, Boston, MA.
"Theory-Guided Design of Thermoplastic Polymers for Spacecraft Thermal Protection Systems"
"Quantitative Structure-Property Relationship of Ring Bond Dissociation Energies in Mono and Polycycloalkanes for Aviation Fuel Applications"
"Theoretical Kinetic Modeling of Preceramic Polymer Pyrolysis to Silicon Carbide"
"HEAT-UP: Design of Polymeric Binder for Green Solid Propellant using Graph Neural Networks" - 🏆 2/2025 - SPaRK was granted 75,000 node-hours (PI: Dr. Cho) from Texas Advanced Computing Center.
"Theoretical Calculation of Ring Opening Energies in Mono and Polycycloalkanes for Aviation Fuel" - 🎤 1/2025 - Dr. Cho had an invited talk on AI-based material design at a 40U40 seminar series.
“Accelerating Fuel & Material Innovation via AI-Theory-Experiment Integration” - 🏆 1/2025 - Dr. Cho received the Faculty Travel Incentive Program Award from UTEP.
- 🎓 1/2025 - Soo Min graduated from the University of Ulsan with a Bachelor's degree and joined UNIST, Korea!
- 🎓 1/2025 - Jesus graduated the UTEP with a Bachelor's degree and joined Bell Flight!
- 🎓 11/2024 - SPaRK's collaborative paper with UTEP College of Education is published in Journal of Latinos and Education!
"Faculty Reflections on Implementing Servingness into Research and Teaching: How Professional Development Around Servingness Fosters Latinx Student Success" - 🎤 10/2024 - Soo Min had an oral presentation at Fall Conference of Korea Society of Combustion in Jeju, Korea.
“Leveraging Graph Neural Network in Prediction of Limiting Oxygen Index and Design of Flame-Retarding Polymers” - 😎😎 9/2024 - Faihim and Razaul became part of the SPaRK Lab team.
- 🎓 9/2024 - SPaRK's collaborative paper with Colorado State University and National Renewable Energy Laboratory is published in Green Chemistry!
"Designing green chemicals by predicting vaporization properties using explainable graph attention networks" - 🎤 8/2024 - Evan had a poster presentation at UTEP COURI Symposia.
"Harnessing Quantum Mechanics to Understand the Combustion Characteristics of Cycloalkanes in Aviation Fuels" - 🎤 8/2024 - Dr. Cho had an invited talk on interdisciplinary research at a Gyeongsang National University.
"Being in the boundary of disciplines – opportunities for a chemical kineticist in the mechanical engineering department" - 🎓 7/2024 - SPaRK's collaborative paper with Argonne National Laboratory is published in Proceedings of the Combustion Institute!
"Competing radical and molecular channels in the unimolecular dissociation of methylformate" - 🎓 7/2024 - SPaRK's collaborative paper with Colorado State University and Yale University is published in Proceedings of the Combustion Institute!
"Sooting tendency of substituted aromatic oxygenates: The role of functional groups and positional isomerism in vanillin isomers" - 🎤 7/2024 - Dr. Cho had four presentations at the International Symposium of Combustion in Milan, Italy.
“Unveiling the chemical kinetics of SMP-10 pyrolysis for silicon carbide formulation”
“Enhancing the predictive accuracy of graph neural network for polymer flammability using transfer learning”
“Competing Radical and Molecular Channels in the Unimolecular Dissociation of Methylformate”
“Sooting tendency of substituted aromatic oxygenates: the role of functional groups and positional isomerism in vanillin isomers” - 🎤 6/2024 - Dr. Cho had an invited talk on AI-based material design at an ACS meeting in Atlanta, GA.
“Accelerating the biofuel discovery through integration of graph neural networks with chemical kinetics,”
“Bridging fuel and polymer databases for improved prediction of the thermal decomposition/oxidation behavior using graph neural networks” - 🚀 6/2024 - Sun City Summit Rocket team secured 4th place at the Spaceport America Cup.
- 🏆 6/2024 - Evan received the SURPASS fellowship from UTEP COURI.
"Harnessing Quantum Mechanics to Understand the Combustion Characteristics of Cycloalkanes in Aviation Fuels" - 😎😎😎 6/2024 - Victor, Emilio, and Evan became part of the SPaRK Lab team.
- 🔬 1/2024 - SPaRK Lab secured a new location within the IDRB at UTEP.
- 🏆 1/2024 - SPaRK Lab was awarded the UTEP URI grant (PI: Dr. Cho).
"Fundamental Kinetics Study on the Fire-Safety of Biodegradable and Bio-based Polymers"
- 😎😎 10/2023 - René and Jesus became part of the SPaRK Lab team.
- 🏆 09/2023 - Dr. Cho was awarded the UT Rising STAR grant (PI: Dr. Cho).
- 😎 09/2023 - Dr. Cho joined UTEP, marking the establishment of SPaRK Lab.
