Fluids, Learning, and Uncertainty in compleX systems
A research subgroup within the Clean Energy Research Group (CERG)
Department of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering · EBIT · University of Pretoria

Website · PI · Scholar

CERG-FLUX Lab is a computational research group within the Clean Energy Research Group (CERG) at the University of Pretoria's Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. Led by Assoc. Prof. Muaaz Bhamjee, the group develops physics-informed computational methods to understand transport phenomena across scales — from industrial multiphase flows and mesoscale lattice Boltzmann dynamics to physics-informed neural networks, high-energy particle physics at CERN, and quantum technologies.

The name FLUX — Fluids, Learning, and Uncertainty in compleX systems — reflects both the physical quantities at the heart of our work and the deliberate intersection of disciplines that defines our research programme. We sit at the boundary between classical computational physics and modern data-driven methods, building tools and training researchers who are fluent in both.

This GitHub organisation is the home for our open-source code, research software, simulation pipelines, and collaborative projects. For a full overview of our research pillars, team, and infrastructure, visit our group website.

To be a leading computational research group in Africa that advances the fundamental understanding of transport phenomena — from fluid mechanics to particle physics — through the deliberate intersection of classical physics, modern machine learning, and high-performance computing.

We develop, validate, and deploy physics-informed computational methods across scales: from mesoscale lattice Boltzmann dynamics to turbulent multiphase industrial flows, from neural operators that respect conservation laws to detector-level analysis at the Large Hadron Collider. We train the next generation of computational scientists who are as comfortable deriving a governing equation as they are debugging a training loop.

Depth over breadth — We pursue mastery in our chosen domains rather than chasing trends. A well-understood method applied with rigour outperforms a fashionable one applied carelessly.

Build over buy — We construct our own tools, pipelines, and infrastructure where it matters. Understanding what's under the hood isn't optional — it's how good science gets done.

Rigour over hype — We validate before we publish, benchmark before we claim, and question before we accept. The physics comes first; the method serves it.

Open by default — Our code, our data, and our methods belong to the community. Reproducibility is not a courtesy — it is a responsibility.

People over papers — The group exists to develop researchers, not just research outputs. A student who leaves with deep skill, clear thinking, and intellectual confidence is a greater contribution than any single publication.

We develop physics-informed computational methods to understand transport phenomena across scales:

Principal Investigator: Assoc. Prof. Muaaz Bhamjee — industrial CFD (Hatch Africa), geospatial AI & climate science (IBM Research), now at UP. SA-ATLAS Team Leader, SAAM Vice President, SA National IUTAM Committee member.

Postgraduate students: 3 MEng + 6 PhD (UP & UJ), with further registrations and postdoctoral fellows in the pipeline.

We're actively recruiting MEng, PhD, and postdoctoral researchers. See our website for details.

Our compute spans local and national resources:

• CHPC Lengau — South Africa's national petascale supercomputer (chpc.ac.za)
• Homelab HPC cluster — multi-node (mjolnir, legion), Slurm, ANSYS RSM, FastAPI monitoring
• SciML pipelines — custom PINN training with physics-constrained loss functions
• Palabos LBM — lattice Boltzmann with DEM coupling for particle-laden flows

University of Pretoria · University of Pretoria Quantum Science and Technology (UPQuST) · ATLAS / CERN · CHPC · SA QuTI · SAAM .

_{⚡ We value depth over breadth, rigour over hype, and building over buying.}