Case Summary:

“[The client] is a mechanical engineer who has made a significant amount of progress in this area. He has developed computationally efficient models capable of predicting turbulent wind structures using conventional hurricane grid resolution data, a vast improvement over traditional models that are time-consuming, energy and computationally intensive, and require high-resolution data to complete. Thanks to these remarkable achievements, it is critical that [the client] is given an opportunity to continue his mechanical engineering research in the United States. [Client’s] novel simulation models are immensely valuable to the United States due to the solutions they provide to weather-based concerns.”

“[The client’s] research endeavors are also noteworthy due to the widespread benefits they provide. His work on modeling the transport aerosolized [sic] oil droplets is also beneficial, as it provides a greater understanding of the spread of harmful aerosols and carcinogens that stem from disastrous oil spills. Clearly, [the client’s] mechanical engineering research offers manifold economic and environmental benefits to the global population. For these reasons, [the client] should be provided with every resource necessary to facilitate his continued research efforts.”

As is evident from the above vociferous iteration of an expert’s opinion of our NIW (National Interest Waiver) client, the Chinese postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering was indeed an excellent professional and academic. As an expert in the field, his proposed endeavor was to continue his research on developing and conducting high-performance computational fluid dynamics simulations using large-eddy simulation techniques in order to characterize urban and coastal phenomena, including modeling air pollution in cities, performing wave-resolving simulations over oceans, and investigating extreme weather events such as hurricanes. This chosen area of work further made it clear that he was indeed an expert who was very knowledgeable and thus a reliable member of the scientific community.

His research advancing his proposed endeavor was of great importance because it is intrinsically useful to global efforts aimed at modeling severe weather events far enough to facilitate evacuations and other mitigation efforts. Additionally, he had worked extensively on modeling situations involving aerosolized oil droplets resulting from large-scale oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez disaster, which remains one of the largest environmental catastrophes in U.S. history and which the NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program documents as having spilled 11 million gallons of oil into the sea around Prince William Sound, Alaska and devastated the surrounding area and wildlife. Hence, due to its clear national importance, his research has in fact been supported with funding from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.

On the other hand, he has been continuously publishing in the area and his work has resulted in 8 peer-reviewed journal articles (3 of them first-authored). These publications have also been cited a total of 33 times according to Google Scholar, thereby demonstrating that these publications are widely recognized and relied upon in the field of mechanical engineering.

Thus, when we were preparing his NIW petition, we made sure to include the above information along with a few other things such as his 4 letters of recommendation, etc. This led to a solid case victory only 2 months and 21 days after filing. We are grateful to USCIS for the approval and to our client for choosing us.