Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, 2017
  • B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, 2011
Licenses & Certifications
  • Professional Engineer Mechanical, California, #41289
Professional Honors
  • Pi Tau Sigma – National Mechanical Engineering Honorary
  • Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society
  • Purdue University Presidential Scholarship
Professional Affiliations
  • National Association of Fire Investigators—NAFI (Member)
  • National Fire Protection Association—NFPA (Member)
  • Combustion Institute
  • Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
  • American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)

Dr. Yen is a mechanical engineer in Exponent's Thermal Science Practice with a background in combustion, heat transfer, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics.  She specializes in multidimensional modeling and computational analysis of complex systems including industrial equipment, combustion system and fluid & heat transfer equipment with focus on failure analysis and fire and explosion investigations.

Dr. Yen has experience on consequence analysis associated with flammable releases and vapor cloud explosions in Oil & Gas facilities including performing facility evaluations for permitting and planning purposes. She specializes in computation modeling, using computational tools including FLACS, StarCCM+, and Ansys Fluent. 

Dr. Yen has performed proactive burn injury hazard analysis for wearables and consumer electronics. She is also experienced in the analysis and investigation of scalds, burn injuries, and frostbite.

Dr. Yen regularly performs computational fluid dynamics(CFD) for biological flows such as heart pumps, specialized catheters, IV infusion devices, and blood oxygenators.

Dr. Yen has extensive experience in turbulent diffusion flames, soot formation for direct injection engine applications and performance and emission evaluations of diesel engines in test cells. She is proficient at coding in Fortran, C, Python, and MATLAB as well as parallelizing code with MPI (Message Passing Interface) and OpenMP. Dr. Yen regularly utilizes CAD software (Solidworks, Catia, ProE, Spaceclaim).

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Yen was a manager at a contract manufacturing company specializing in CNC machining of large engine components such as cylinder blocks, heads, main bearing caps, and connecting rods. Dr. Yen performed her PhD research at Purdue University where she conducted multidimensional modeling of turbulent diffusion flames for diesel engine applications. She assessed the effect of exhaust gas recirculation, combustion chamber temperature, and injection pressure on fuel-air mixing and soot formation under direct injection engine conditions. Dr. Yen's work focused on evaluating and developing soot models that were experimentally validated across several regimes and fuels types.  Additionally, she has experience in evaluating performance and emissions of diesel engines in test cells.