Yoonjin Won
Portrait

Yoonjin Won

Professor, Samueli School of Engineering, University of California, Irvine

Director of Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI), ML4HEAT

Principal Investigator of Won lab

Office: 4200 Engineering Gateway

Email: won@uci.edu

Yoonjin Won is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, where she also holds courtesy appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, as well as Materials Science and Engineering. She earned her PhD from Stanford University (Nanoheat) and her undergraduate degree from Seoul National University. She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the ASME Electronic & Photonic Packaging Division Early Career Award, the ASME Electronic & Photonic Packaging Division Women Engineer Award, the ASME ICNMM Outstanding Leadership Award, the Emerging Innovation/Early Career Innovator from UCI Beall Innovation Center, Faculty Excellence in Research Awards (Mid-Career) from UCI, and numerous best paper and poster awards.

Research

The Won Lab studies physical scene understanding as it relates to heat and mass transfer, with a core mission of developing physically eXplainable AI models for the physical sciences. We build machines that don't just predict; they see, reason about, and explain the complex interactions of the physical world. Our research investigates the physics-informed representations needed to make AI predictions truly interpretable to scientists. We aim to answer fundamental questions about phase-change phenomena by drawing inspiration from both first-principles thermodynamics and human-like visual reasoning. Representative projects include VISION-iT, BubbleMask, BubbleML, and our frameworks for interpretable digitalized bubble statistics.

Media

Group

Students

Alumni

Talks

  • 09/2025
    Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Phase Change Heat Transfer Invited
    2025 UCI-TAU Conference, 2025, invited speaker
  • 08/2025
    Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Phase Change Heat Transfer Keynote
    The 11th World Conference on Experimental Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics (ExHFT-11), Virtual, August 15-18, 2025, invited keynote speaker
  • 08/2025
    Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Phase Change Heat Transfer Invited
    Mini-Workshop, Choong-Ang University, Aug 2025. Hosted by Prof. Hyoungsoon Lee.
  • 08/2025
    Machine Learning Applications in Two-Phase Heat Transfer for Advanced Thermal Management Invited
    International Seminar on Thermal Management in High-Density Data Centers, Seoul, South Korea, August 11-12 2025, invited speaker
  • 06/2025
    Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Phase Change Heat Transfer Panel
    IIR Conference on Thermophysical Properties and Transport Processes of Refrigerants (TPTPR), the University of Maryland, June 15-18, 2025, invited panel speaker

Publications

See the full list of publications at Google Scholar.