Kyle Daun, PEng

Kyle Daun is a Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Professor at the University of Waterloo.
His main research interests are heat conduction from aerosolized nanoparticles, laser-based combustion tomography, heat treatment in materials processing, and optimal design of industrial combustion devices. Professor Daun’s research group studies inverse problems that arise in combustion and heat transfer, including laser-based nanoparticle metrology, optical tomography, and design optimization of combustion devices and industrial furnaces.
From 2004 to 2007, Professor Daun was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow and then a research officer at the Institute for Chemical Process and Environmental Technology at the National Research Council Canada (NRC-ICPET) in Ottawa. As a research officer, he investigated radiation heat transfer in solid oxide fuel cells with Dr. Steven Beale, and then helped develop and improve combustion diagnostics (line-of-sight-attenuation, laser-induced incandescence) with Dr. Greg Smallwood and Dr. Fengshan Liu. Amongst other accomplishments, he was one of the first to experimentally characterize the gas-surface scattering physics underlying thermal accommodation in LII, which he later validated through molecular dynamics simulations.
Professor Daun is also a referee for the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer (JQSRT), Applied Optics, and the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer.
Professor Daun was awarded the JQSRT Young Scientist award (now called the Ray Viskanta award) that recognises the top international researcher in thermal radiation under 36 years of age in 2010, and the Alexander von Humboldt research fellowship in 2015.

• Radiation heat transfer, Combustion diagnostics, Nanoparticle metrology, Inverse analysis and optimal design, Gas/surface scattering, Molecular gas dynamics, Energy, Nanotechnology, Automotive, Nanoparticle Metrology, Heat transfer in materials processing

• 2003, Doctorate Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
• 1999, Master's Mechanical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada
• 1997, Bachelor's Mechanical Engineering, University of Manitoba, Canada

• 1999 NSERC PGS B Scholarship
• 2000 Professional Development Award, The University of Texas at Austin
• 2000 David Burton Jr. Graduate Fellowship, The University of Texas at Austin
• 2002 Houston Endowment President's Excellence Fellowship, The University of Texas at Austin
• 2009 Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer - Reviewer of the Year

• ME 353 - Heat Transfer 1
  • Taught in 2021, 2024, 2025
• ME 456 - Heat Transfer 2
  • Taught in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024
• ME 653 - Radiation Heat Transfer
  • Taught in 2021, 2022, 2024
• ME 760 - Special Topics in Thermal Engineering
  • Taught in 2021, 2025

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Researchers use special camera to curb gas emissions
• Faculty researchers awarded $900K from government
• Researchers awarded $4 million in federal funding