About Me

I was born in Madrid, Spain where I studied Mechanical Engineering with an specialization in Energy Technologies. Afterwards I moved to Stockholm to further specialise in Fluid Mechanics and I completed my PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dan Henningson, Prof. Philipp Schlatter and Dr. Yohann Duguet. Afterwards, I worked as a postdoc at DAMTP, University of Cambridge with Prof. Rich Kerswell and Dr. Jacob Page. where I also was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ's College, University of Cambridge. Currently, I am a postdoc at KTH Engineering Mechanics with working on reinforcement learning for flow control with Dr. Ricardo Vinuesa.

Short CV

Contact Information

Email: beneitez @ k t h . s e
KTH Engineering Mechanics
Osquars Backe 18, floor 6
Stockholm 100 44
Sweden

Research

Interests

My main research interest is in nonlinear dynamics applied to fluid mechanics. I use concepts from dynamical systems together with machine learning technique to try to improve our understanding of subcritical transition between the laminar and turbulent flow states, as well as taming turbulence. I work on both Newtonian and complex fluids. I am particularly interested in the transition to turbulence in viscoelastic fluids, where the flow can become chaotic even at low Reynolds numbers, and many exciting phenomena can be observed (ET and EIT). To study the emergent complex dynamics we perform large-scale direct numerical simulations using pseudo-spectral codes combined with low-order modeling and analysis of the equations. Other research interests include hydrodynamics stability of jets, focusing on complex jets, and to some extent bioflows.

Publications

13. R. Ohana, M. McCabe, [and 22 others including M. Beneitez] (2024). The Well: a Large-Scale Collection of Diverse Physics Simulations for Machine Learning. NeurIPS 2024 (OpenReview)

12. M. Beneitez, J. Page, Y. Dubief & R. R. Kerswell (2024). Transition route to elastic and elasto-inertial turbulence in polymer channel flows. Accepted in Phys. Rev. Phys. (arXiv)

11. M. M. P. Couchman, M. Beneitez, J. Page & R. R. Kerswell (2024). Inertial enhancement of the polymer diffusive instability. J. Fluid Mech. 981, A2 (PDF)

10. M. Beneitez, J. Page, Y. Dubief & R. R. Kerswell (2024). Multistability of elasto-inertial two-dimensional channel flow. J. Fluid Mech. 981, A30 (PDF)

9. M. Beneitez, D. Moreno-Boza & A. Sevilla (2023). Universal free-fall law for liquid jets under fully-developed injection conditions. Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 224001 (PDF)

8. M. Beneitez, J. Page & R. R. Kerswell (2023). Polymer diffusive instability leading to elastic turbulence in plane Couette flow. Phys. Rev. Fluids 8, L101901 (PDF)

7. M. Beneitez, Y. Duguet, P. Schlatter & D. S. Henningson (2023). Instability of the optimal edge trajectory in the Blasius boundary layer. J. Fluid Mech., 971, A42 (PDF)

6. G. Buza, M. Beneitez, J. Page & R. R. Kerswell (2022). Finite-amplitude elastic waves in viscoelastic channel flow from large to zero Reynolds number. J. Fluid Mech. 951, A3 (PDF)

5. J. S. Kern, M. Beneitez, A. Hanifi & D. S. Henningson (2021). Transient linear stability of pulsating Poiseuille flow using optimally time-dependent modes. J. Fluid Mech. 927, A6 (PDF)

4. M. Beneitez, Y. Duguet & D. S. Henningson (2020). Modeling the collapse of the edge when two transition routes compete. Phys. Rev. E 102, 053108 (PDF)

3. M. Beneitez, Y. Duguet, P. Schlatter & D. S. Henningson (2020). Edge manifold as a Lagrangian coherent structure in a high-dimensional state space. Phys. Rev. Research 2, 033258 (PDF)

2. C. Vavaliaris, M. Beneitez & D. S. Henningson (2020). Optimal perturbations and transition energy thresholds in boundary layer shear flows. Phys. Rev. Fluids 5, 062401(R) (PDF)

1. M. Beneitez, Y. Duguet, P. Schlatter & D. S. Henningson (2019). Edge tracking in spatially developing boundary layer flows. J. Fluid Mech. 881, 164-181 (PDF)

Teaching

Cambridge

  • Tutorials (Supervisions) in Maths Part IB Variational Principles - 2024
  • Tutorials (Supervisions) in Maths Part IA Vector Calculus - 2024
  • Tutorials (Supervisions) in Maths Part IA Analysis - 2023
  • Tutorials (Supervisions) in Maths Part IA Differential Equations - 2022, 2023
  • Tutorials (Supervisions) in Maths Part II Numerical Analysis - 2021
  • Supervision of internship student - 4 months in 2022
  • Co-supervision of Master thesis - 4 months in 2024

KTH

  • Mekanik II - 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
  • Mekanik - 2018, 2019, 2020
  • Supervision of internship student - 6 months in 2018
  • Supervision of Master thesis - 6 months in 2021

Misc

I am also enthusiastic about science communication and reading about math and physics in general. It is always great checking Quanta Magazine and FYFD among others. I am interested in open-source software and in the Julia programming language. A very flexible tool that I use in my research is the general purpose spectral solver Dedalus

During the covid-19 crisis I tried to introduce Chaos theory for kids who could not go to school due to the lockdown in many countries in a lesson together with Encounteredu. The video is available here!