Welcome to WIRE
Mission
The main goal of our research is to improve our understanding and ability to predict turbulent transport of momentum and scalars (e.g., heat, water vapor, pollutants) in environmental flows, with emphasis on the atmospheric boundary layer and wind energy systems. Improved descriptions of those processes are developed and used in engineering, environmental and wind energy applications (e.g., weather, air quality and wind resource assessment models).
Our research involves a synergistic combination of experimental (field and wind tunnel) work, numerical modelling (large-eddy simulation) and theoretical development.
Specific areas of research include:
- Wind energy
- Flow over complex terrain
- Flow in urban canopies
- Large-Eddy Simulation
- Thermally stratified flows
- Boundary-layer turbulence
Last publications
Power and wake of a floating wind turbine in surge motion: Theoretical and experimental investigations
Energy Conversion and Management. 2026. Vol. 369. DOI : 10.1016/j.enconman.2026.122028.Relaxed Shape Alignment and Temporal Distortion Loss for improving solar ramp events prediction
Energy and AI. 2026. Vol. 26, p. 100881. DOI : 10.1016/j.egyai.2026.100881.Improving day-ahead probabilistic solar irradiance forecasting via shape-prior flow matching for numerical weather prediction downscaling
Energy and AI. 2026. Vol. 26, p. 100887. DOI : 10.1016/j.egyai.2026.100887.The effect of pressure gradient and turbulence intensity on wind turbine wake and performance
Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. 2026. Vol. 18, num. 5. DOI : 10.1063/5.0334556.Effect of the surge motion on wake characteristics of a floating offshore wind turbine
Energy Conversion and Management. 2026. Vol. 362, p. 121608. DOI : 10.1016/j.enconman.2026.121608.Awards
EPFL WIRE Lab alumnus Dr. Wenlong Liao has been awarded China’s Young Scientist Talent Fund and will join Southeast University—one of China’s top universities (ranked #155 globally in the latest U.S. News World University Rankings)—as a Full Professor in 2026.
Mohammad Jamshidmofid received the Best Poster Award at ENAC Research Day 2025 for his poster entitled “An Analytical Approach to Modeling Wind Turbine Wake Dynamics.”
Prof. Fernando Porté-Agel has won the ENAC Polysphère Award (2021-2022). This is the second time in under a decade. He uses concrete examples and novel teaching methods to make fluid mechanics a fun, interactive topic to study.
Prof. Fernando Porté-Agel won a 2016-2017 EPFL Polysphère Award. Every year, the AGEPOLY association awards 5 EPFL professors (one from each School) a Polysphère Award in recognition of the excellence of their teaching.
Vincent Rolin, PhD, received the 2017 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award, in the field of Energy, Resources and the Environment. The poster was presented at EGU (European Geosciences Union) in Vienna, Austria and is entitled: Counter-rotating vortex pairs in the wake of a vertical axis wind turbine
On May 23rd, 2017, Majid Bastankhah, postdoctoral researcher, received the ENAC – Earth Sciences and Engineering Award, in the field of environmental engineering for his publication entitled : Experimental and theoretical study of wind turbine wakes in yawed conditions, published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
Sina Shamsoddin, PhD, won the first prize – category Dynamic at the 2017 ACCES – Visualization Contest with a project entitled “Flow Through a Vertical-axis Wind Turbine Farm”. Theme this year was Computational Thinking.