Alan McGaughey leads the Nanoscale Transport Phenomena Laboratory, which seeks to understand the transport of mass, momentum, and energy at the atomic level by studying the behavior of phonons, photons, electrons, and fluid particles. Their research is based in mechanical engineering and incorporates knowledge from physics, materials science, and chemistry. They develop and apply molecular- and meso-scale simulation techniques, and collaborate closely with experimental research groups.

His work was recognized by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program in 2009. His commitment to innovation in teaching has earned him the Benjamin Richard Teare Teaching Award in 2014 and participation in the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium in 2015. He has been voted Professor of the Year by the Mechanical Engineering seniors three times (2012, 2015, 2017). He received a 2019 College of Engineering faculty award, and has been published in Nature Materials for his team’s discovery of the effects of rotational disorder on thermal conductivity in superatomic structures.