Wicking of Liquids in Porous Media Advances and Applications

Krishna M. Pillai, PhD, is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the director of the Laboratory for Flow and Transport Studies in Porous Media, USA. One of Dr. Pillai's primary research interests lies in wicking and evaporation. He is a co-editor of Wicking in Porous Materials: Traditional and Modern Modeling Approaches (CRC Press, 2013), and the present volume is his second book on this topic. He has published extensively in reputed technical journals and presented his work at numerous international conferences. Dr. Pillai has collaborated with several companies, including SC Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Kimberly-Clark, improving product design through funded research, training, and consultancies. He was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER grant in 2004. Dr. Pillai earned his doctorate at the University of Delaware and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He earned BTech and MTech degrees in mechanical engineering at IIT Kanpur, India.

Ryan Masoodi, PhD, is a professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Architecture, Design, and Engineering at Thomas Jefferson University, USA. He earned a PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory for Flow and Transport Studies in Porous Media. Dr. Masoodi's research focuses on transport phenomena in porous materials, with particular emphasis on capillarity-driven wicking and flow in swelling porous media, integrating theoretical modeling, laboratory experimentation, and high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics. He has published extensively on wicking, permeability evolution, and mold filling in natural fiber composites, authoring more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. Dr. Masoodi is a co-editor of Wicking in Porous Materials: Traditional and Modern Modeling Approaches (CRC Press, 2013). His research has been supported by multiple federal and state grants as well as industry-sponsored projects.

Abul Borkot Md Rafiqul Hasan, PhD, is a mechanical engineer specializing in thermal-fluid sciences and transport phenomena. He earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA, where he conducted research in the Laboratory for Flow and Transport Studies in Porous Media. His research focuses on fluid and thermal transport in porous media, including capillary-driven wicking, evaporation, non-isothermal transport, and contaminant migration in unsaturated soils. His work integrates experimental investigation with analytical, numerical, and data-driven modeling approaches. Dr. Hasan has authored and co-authored multiple peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in heat and mass transfer, porous media, and thermal-fluid sciences. His broader research interests include advanced thermal management systems, energy systems, and complex transport phenomena.