The Student Advisory Committee (SAC) is a group of students who work to foster student engagement in the IGTI community and improve the Turbo Expo conference every year. Towards this goal, the SAC organizes various sessions and events during the conference, provides opportunities for students to work behind the scenes with leaders in their technical area, and awards travel funds to eligible degree seeking individuals.
Meet the 2024-2025 Student Advisory Committee (SAC) Leadership Team!
Marco Castaldi
Chair
Marco is a passionately curious, research-oriented engineer, holding double Master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino and Politecnico di Milano, within the framework of the Alta Scuola Politecnica honors program. In 2022, he successfully completed the Research Master in Fluid Dynamics at the von Karman Institute (Belgium), specializing in Turbomachinery and Propulsion. In his past research, he contributed to the investigation of Inlet Particle Separators designed for the latest generation of turboprop and turboshaft engines. His current doctoral research focuses on high-fidelity multidisciplinary shape optimization of turbomachinery components.
Janakiraman Thiyagarajan
Vice-Chair
Janakiraman Thiyagarajan is an Industrial PhD student at Lund University and Scania CV AB, Sweden. He works with the design and development of radial compressors for heavy duty applications with a research focus on aerodynamic design, aero-acoustics and optimization. He was a part of the Erasmus Mundus THRUST (TurbomacHinery AeRomechanics UniverSity Training) Master program offered by KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and University of Liege (Belgium). Prior to the Master program, he worked in the Aerospace industry in the areas of Performance of Jet engines and design of APUs after obtaining a Bachelor degree in Aeronautical Engineering. He was an active member of the Student Advisory Committee (SAC) Liaison for ASME Turbo Expo 2024 and has been elected as the Vice-Chair of IGTI SAC for the upcoming ASME Turbo Expo 2025.
Salvatore Carusotto
Secretary
Salvatore Carusotto obtained his MSc in Mechanical Engineering at Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in 2022 and spent a semester during his master's at Karlsruher Institut für Technologie within the ERASMUS+ program. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD at the PoliTO Energy Department in collaboration with EthosEnergy Italia SpA and serves as a teaching assistant in the courses of Fluid Machinery and Combustion & Gasdynamics. He participated at the SAC Liaisons initiative in 2024 for the IGTI Combustion, Fuels, & Emissions Technical Committee. His research focuses on combustion, emissions, and hydrogen applications for gas turbine power plants' lifetime extension. In particular, the PhD project aims at redesigning existing gas turbine plants using 3D CFD reactive models to enable fuel flexibility. He is also member of the ETN Young Engineers Committee, a network of committed young engineers promoting fresh perspectives for a sustainable world and society.
Dimitrios Bermperis
Past Chair
Dimitrios Bermperis is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Energy Engineering at Mälardalen University (MDU) in Västerås, Sweden. He holds a Diploma of Mechanical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He completed a Master Thesis in collaboration with Mälardalen University on the topic of modelling and assessment of electrical power systems for hybrid-electric turbofan aircraft. His current research focuses on hybrid-electric and hydrogen-fired propulsion system configurations for regional aircraft. The work is directed towards the conceptual design, and performance of such powertrain architectures and its thermal management system. Along with these, integration with the turbine engine and aircraft, and system-level performance, feasibility, and optimization studies are being carried out as a part of his work.