Daehyun Choi

I am a postdoctoral researcher working with Prof. M. Saad Bhamla at Georgia Institute of Technology. I earned my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2022, advised by Prof. Hyungmin Park (Best Ph.D. Thesis Award) for fluid mechanics, and subsequently joined Ajou University as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Daeshik Kang (2022–2023) before moving to Georgia Tech. My research lies at the intersection of bioinspired propulsion, vortex dynamics, fluid–structure interaction (FSI), and machine-learning-based flow diagnostics — aimed at decoding the fluid physics of biological locomotion and translating those principles into next-generation propulsion, soft robots, and physical AI systems. This research has been supported by ~$700k in competitive grants, including DARPA and the National Research Foundation of Korea.

Research Interests

• Fluid mechanics
• Bioinspired propulsion and locomotion
• Fluid-structure interaction and vortex dynamics
• Vision AI
• Multi-fidelity & multi-objective data-driven optimization
• Multiphase flows
• Physical AI
• Soft robotics

→ See research projects

Awards & Grants

• Emerging Scholar Best Paper Prize, J. Fluid Mech., Cambridge University Press (2025)
• DARPA Young Faculty Award — technical leader ($500k) (2024)
• Robert M. Nerem International Travel Award, Georgia Tech (2024)
• Young Researcher Travel Award, IUTAM Symposium on Capillarity and Elastocapillarity in Biology (2024)
• Sejong International Postdoctoral Fellowship ($140k), NRF Korea (2023)
• Best Ph.D. Thesis Award, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University (2022)
• Domestic Postdoctoral Scholarship ($50k), NRF Korea (2022)
• BK21+ Doctoral Scholarship ($10k), Ministry of Education, Korea (2016)
• Presidential Scholarship for Undergraduates ($30k), Korea (2015)
• 1st Prize, EDISON Challenge (CFD contest), Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Korea (2014)