Dr. Nathan Quinlan graduated from NUI Galway with B.E. and M.Eng.Sc. degrees in mechanical engineering, and with a D.Phil. (Ph.D. equivalent) from Oxford University in 1999. After a period as a postdoctoral researcher in Oxford, he was appointed a lecturer in NUI Galway in 2000, and promoted to senior lecturer in 2009. His research interests are in fluid dynamics, and in particular in applications to biology and medical devices. He has extensive experience in the development and application of both experimental and computational techniques, including novel mesh-free approaches to computational fluid dynamics. He has collaborated with the a number of partners in the medical devices industry and received competitive research funding from SFI, Enterprise Ireland and the EU, among others. He and his students have received a number of awards for research presented at national and international conferences.He has taught undergraduate courses in the fields of thermodynamics, heat transfer, computing, instrumentation, dynamics and introductory mechanical engineering and design. He received the University Presidents and College Awards for Teaching Excellence. He has served as Programme Director of Energy Systems Engineering B.E. and M.E., and Head of Discipline of Mechanical Engineering.

Research interests include: Mesh-free particle methods for computational fluid dynamics: Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics and the Finite Volume Particle Method Fluid dynamics in prosthetic heart valves, other medical devices and the respiratory system Extremely high resolution measurement of transitional and turbulent blood flow in cardiovascular devices Marine and wind energy Experimental techniques for fluid dynamics: Particle Image Velocimetry and Doppler Global Velocimetry