Larry Villasmil, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology/Packaging Science Department. He joined RIT in 2006 and previously taught and was a research assistant at Texas A&M. He also worked in industry as a rotating machinery senior engineer at PDVSA in Venezuela. Villasmil's research interests focus on computational fluid dynamics, turbulence modeling; rotor dynamics and turbomachinery and components design; industrial power generation and refrigeration; heat transfer and fluid power. He is also interested in conventional and alternative energy technologies, engineering education as well as ethics in engineering. Villasmil's work has been published and he has presented at numerous conferences including:

Schultz JW, Villasmil LA, "Reconciliation of Bernoulli's Equation in Channel Flow: An In-Depth Empirical and Numerical Approach", AC 2009-1584, ASEE Annual Conference, Austin, June 2009.

Villasmil LA, Childs DW, Chen HC, "Understanding Friction Factor Behavior in Liquid Annular Seals with Deliberately Roughened Surfaces, Roughness Geometric Characteristics Defining Flow Resistance", GT2006-91046, ASME Turbo Expo: Power for Land, Sea and Air, Barcelona, Spain, May 2006.

Villasmil LA, Chen HC, Childs DW, Evaluation of Near-wall Turbulence Models for Liquid Annular Seals with Roughened Walls, AIAA Journal, 2005; 43(10):2137-2146.

Villasmil LA, Chen HC, Childs DW, "Evaluation of Near-wall Turbulence Models for Liquid Annular Seals with Roughened Walls", AIAA-2003-3741, 33RD AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference, Orlando, Florida, June 2003.

Villasmil LA, Childs DW, Chen HC, Understanding Friction Factor Behavior in Liquid Annular Seals with Deliberately Roughened Surfaces, ASME Journal of Tribology, 2005; 127:213-222.

Villasmil LA, Childs DW, Chen H.C., "Understanding Friction Factor Behavior in Liquid Annular Seals with Deliberately Roughened Surfaces", AIAA-2003-5070, 39TH AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, Huntsville, Alabama, July 2003.

He is an active member of many boards and professional affiliations including the Texas Board of Professional Engineers, AIAA, ASME, and ASEE. Villasmil has been a Peer Reviewer for ASME since 2004 and Tribology International since 2005. He is also the New York Iota Chapter Advisor for Tau Alpha Pi Society. For five consecutive years he was the recipient of the Ralph James Fellowship and is a member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.

Research interests include: Computational fluid dynamics and turbulence modeling, heat transfer and fluid power.