1. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
I am writing this letter of support at the request of Mr. Douglas Monteiro. I have
known Douglas for about one year. Douglas, a Petroleum Engineering student from Federal
University of Sergipe in Brazil, was under the Brazil Scientific Mobility Program (BSMP) taking
undergraduate courses at University of Idaho. He contacted me because he was interested on
doing research with me during the Summer 2015 as part of his academic training. After I saw his
credentials, I could not say no to such proposition. He still maintains such credentials at a high
level.
My research areas of expertise are multiphase flows, turbulent flows, transport of
particles in fluid flows, compressible flows, heat transfer, numerical modeling, and high
performance parallel computing and scientific computation. Most of the numerical modeling I
have done is with my own in-house codes but I also use commercial software. One of the
specific topics I have been working on is on the study of erosion in pipelines. There are many
processes in the Oil and Gas industry where a fluid transported through pipelines carries particles
or droplets within it. The interaction of the particles with the pipe walls might create excessive
erosion in the pipe that could cause major financial losses. Even though it is an important
industrial problem, we are far from having a full picture of the erosion phenomena in pipelines.
One of the key elements to understand the phenomena is to study the fluid-particle-wall
interaction inside the pipeline system, which I plan to undertake. Douglas came to my research
group to work on this topic.
Douglas’s academic training at Old Dominion University lasted for 12 weeks in the
Summer of 2015, during which he worked about 40 hours per week. He was heavily involved in
research activities in every single day of his stay at ODU. He took a course on CFD for
Engineering Applications required for the research activities. After taking that course he was
able to use a commercial software (COMSOL) to model fluid flows in different scenarios. As for
the academic training itself, he started with a literature review, which provided the necessary
background to the study case at hand. After the literature review, numerical tests were performed
to match results found in the literature. With the results, we extended the computer simulations
to specific cases of our interest. After the 12 weeks of Academic Training, we produced
a scientific article we presented at a scientific conference. The story of his visit at ODU was
highlighted in our local university newspaper (InsideODU), please see:
https://www.odu.edu/news/2015/8/brazil_visit#.VhFmcNaEaAQ
Douglas proved to be a responsible, organized and hardworking student, fully
capable of solving problems and able to focus his energy on the task at hand. He has showed a

2. tremendous capacity for learning with critical thinking. The work done by him was always of
high quality. I am pleased to give a very strong recommendation for Douglas. I am sure he is
well qualified and skilled to be one of best in whatever he decides to work on. Please, do not
hesitate to contact me in case you have any question at oayala@odu.edu or 757-683-4467.
Sincerely,
Orlando M. Ayala H., M.Sc. Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Engineering Technology Department
Old Dominion University