Nominee for President

Robert K. Prud’homme

Robert K. Prud’homme is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Director of the Engineering Biology Program at Princeton University. He received his BS at Stanford University and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison under Professor Bob Bird. He has served on the executive committees of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Materials Science Division and The Society of Rheology. He is chair of the Technical Advisory Board for Material Science Research for Dow Chemical Company, which directs Dow’s materials research programs, and he was on the Board of Directors of Rheometric Scientific Inc., the leading manufacturer of rheological instrumentation. His awards include the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Sydney Ross Lectureship at RPI. He has been the organizer and Chair of the Gordon Conference on Ion Containing Polymers, and the Society of Petroleum Engineers Forum on Stimulation Fluid Rheology, in addition to organizing numerous sessions at AIChE, ACS, and SOR meetings. His research interests include rheology and self-assembly of complex fluids. System of interest are biopolymer solutions and gels, surfactant mesophases, and polymer/surfactant mixtures where weak molecular-level interactions can be used to tune macroscopic bulk properties and phase behavior.

See also Prud’homme’s web page

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Nominees for Vice President

Ralph H. Colby

Ralph H. Colby received his B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University in 1979. After working for two years at the General Electric Company in rheology research and process development, he attended graduate school at Northwestern University, where he received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1983 and 1985 working with Bill Graessley. Graduate research focused on rheology of linear polybutadiene melts and solutions, and included 15 months as a visiting scholar in the Exxon Research and Engineering Company, Corporate Research - Science Laboratories. He then worked for ten years at the Eastman Kodak Company in their Corporate Research Laboratories. Rheology research areas over these ten years included linear polymer melts and solutions, miscible polymer blends, block copolymers, randomly branched polymers, polymer gels, liquid crystalline polymers, polyelectrolytes, proteins, surfactants and colloidal suspensions.

In 1995, Ralph was hired as Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University and was promoted to Professor in 2000. He teaches a very demanding undergraduate course on Polymer Rheology and Processing, teaches graduate courses on Rheology and on Polymer Physics, and continues to use rheological experiments to probe the dynamics of polymers and other complex fluids. Ralph has co-authored over 120 publications and published a textbook Polymer Physics in 2003.

Ralph has been very active in the American Physical Society, made a Fellow in 1998 and served as Chair of the Division of Polymer Physics 2002-2003. Ralph has been a member of the Society of Rheology since 1979, and has only missed five Annual Meetings since. With Pat Mather, Ralph organized the technical program for the Society of Rheology Meeting in Monterey in 1998 and with Gary Leal, Ralph is organizing the technical program for the International Congress on Rheology in Monterey in 2008.

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Faith A. Morrison

Faith A. Morrison has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Michigan Technological University since 1990 and is the author of the textbook Understanding Rheology (Oxford, 2001). Dr. Morrison received a BSE in Chemical Engineering magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1983 and a PhD at the University of Massachusetts in 1988 under the supervision of Henning Winter. Dr. Morrison did postdoctoral work at ATT Bell Laboratories under Shiro Matsuoka and Ron Larson and at the Ecole de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) under Claudine Noel. Dr. Morrison has completed two sabbatical stays, first at 3M Company (1997-98) and most recently at Korea University (2005-6). Dr. Morrison has been involved in research on the rheology of block copolymers, high-molecular-weight elastomers, dendrimers, and carbon-filled liquid-crystal polymer systems.

Dr. Morrison’s service to The Society has included: Chair of the Constitutional Reform Committee (1997-99), Member (2000-2005) and Chair (2000-2003) of the Membership Committee, Member of the Nominating Committee (2001), Member of the Technical Program Committee (2001), and Editor of the Rheology Bulletin (2003-present).

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Nominee for Secretary

A. Jeffrey Giacomin

A member of The Society of Rheology since 1983, Jeffrey Giacomin has chaired the Rheology Research Center (RRC) at the University of Wisconsin in Madison since 1996. Giacomin chaired the Local Arrangements Committee when the RRC hosted the Society’s 71st Annual Meeting in 1999, and for its 81st in 2009, Giacomin now chairs this same committee. He also chaired the Society’s Membership Committee (1989-1997), and served on the Executive Committee as Member-At-Large (1995-1997), and as Secretary (1999-2000, 2001-2002, 2003-present). Professor Giacomin has also served as Associate Editor for Finance (1998-2000) of the Journal of Rheology, and as its Associate Editor for Business (2000-present). Giacomin has also been appointed to the Publications Services Subcommittee of the American Institute of Physics, (1998-2000, 2001-2003, 2003-2005, 2005-2007), a committee which he now chairs. Giacomin has also served on the Ad-Hoc Committee on Constitutional Reform (1997-1998). Giacomin also serves as a Trustee for the American Physical Society Insurance Trust. An experimentalist, Giacomin’s research focuses on nonlinear viscoelasticity and its role in plastics processing.

See also Giacomin’s web page.

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Nominee for Treasurer

Montgomery T. Shaw

After completing B.Ch.E. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering at Cornell University, Dr. Shaw moved south to Princeton University, where he studied under the late Professor Tobolsky, obtaining his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1970. For the next six years he was associated with the R&D department of Union Carbide Corporation in Bound Brook, NJ. In 1977 Dr. Shaw joined the faculty of the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Connecticut. Presently, he is serving as the Interim Head of the new Chemical, Materials and Biomolecular Engineering Department. At the nearby Institute of Materials Science he conducts research in the areas of polymer solution and blend thermodynamics, polymer rheology and processing, and the aging characteristics of polymers. He is co-author of the monographs Polymer-Polymer Miscibility (Academic, 1979), Computer Programs for Rheologists (Hanser, 1994), and the 3rd edition of the well-known textbook Introduction to Polymer Viscoelasticity. He is serving as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation. Recognitions include the SPE International Award for Research (1998), Engineering Distinguished Professorship (1999-2001), SPE Fellow (2000), A. T. Dibenedetto Distinguished Professorship (2002-2004), the SPE International Award (2002), the Founder's Award of the Polymer Analysis Division of SPE (2004), and the Chancellor's Research Excellence Award (2004).

Also see Shaw’s web page .

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Nominee for Editor

John F. Brady

John F. Brady is the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He received his BS in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975 and spent the next year at Cambridge University as a Churchill Scholar. He received both an MS and PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford University, the latter in 1981. Following a postdoctoral year in Paris at the Ecole Superiéure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, he joined the Chemical Engineering department at MIT. Dr. Brady moved to Caltech in 1985, where he has remained ever since, serving as department chairman from 1993-1999.

Dr. Brady’s research interests are in the mechanical and transport properties of two-phase materials, especially complex fluids such as biological liquids, colloid dispersions, suspensions, porous media, etc. His research takes a multilevel approach and combines elements of statistical and continuum mechanics to understand how macroscopic behavior emerges from microscale physics. He is particularly noted for the invention of the Stokesian Dynamics technique for simulating the behavior of particles dispersed in a viscous fluid under a wide range of conditions.

Dr. Brady has been recognized for his work by several awards, including a Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the ASEE Curtis W. McGraw Research Award, the Corrsin and Batchelor lectureships in fluid mechanics, and the Professional Progress Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He has held positions as the Juliot-Curie Professor at ESPCI in Paris and the J.M. Burgers Professor at Twente University in the Netherlands. Dr. Brady was an associate editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics from 1990-2005 and is currently the editor of the Journal of Rheology. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

See also Brady’s web page 1 and web page 2.

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Nominees for Member-at-Large (elect three)

Marie-Claude Heuzey

Marie-Claude is an associate professor of Chemical Engineering at École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada. She received a B.Sc.A. in Metallurgy and Materials Science from École Polytechnique in 1994. Owing to an “NSERC 1967 Centennial Scholarship”, she went afterwards to McGill University to complete a M.Eng. (1996) and a Ph.D. (1999) in Chemical Engineering under the supervision of John Dealy. After her Ph.D. she joined the Chemical Engineering department at the University of Ottawa in Ontario as an assistant professor, but shortly after she was recruited by her Alma Mater and returned to École Polytechnique de Montréal in 2000. She has been there since and was promoted to associate professor in 2004. Marie-Claude is currently an active member of the Center for Applied Research on Polymers and Composites (CREPEC), a large inter-institutional academic research centre. Her work focuses on the rheology of heterophasic systems such as particulate suspensions, blends, foams and polysaccharide gels. In 2001 she received the Quebec government FQRNT Fellowship “Strategic Program for Professors-Researchers” for a 5-year duration. From 2000 to 2004 she was a Chair Co-holder of the École Polytechnique Marianne-Mareschal Chair that promotes engineering as an attractive choice of career for women. More recently she has given several invited scientific and technical lectures in Canada, Brazil, France and in the United States.

Marie-Claude has been a member of The Society of Rheology since her graduate studies. She has co-organized a special symposium in honour of John Dealy at the SOR 77th Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

See also Heuzey’s web page.

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Bamin Khomami

Bamin Khomami graduated from the Ohio State University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 1983 (Summa Cum Laude) and obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois-Urbana in 1985 and 1987, respectively. He joined Washington University in 1987 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor and Francis F. Ahmann Professor of Chemical Engineering in 1992 and 1997 respectively. In fall of 2006 he joined the University of Tennessee in Knoxville as the Armour T. Granger and Alvin & Sally Beaman distinguished University Professor and Head of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department. In addition, between 1992 to 2006, he has served as visiting Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, Universidad Nacional De Education A Distancia and the Technical University of Denmark.

Currently, Khomami’s research program is mainly focused on engineering of materials with a desired micro- or nano-structure as well as application of nanotechnology including large scale integrated nano/micro fluidic devices to biology, chemistry, and medicine. The main focus is on the study of a) dynamics of complex fluids including polymeric and biological fluids, fiber suspensions, and colloidal systems, b) aerosol based processing of nano-structured particles and coatings, and c) specifically decorated (lipid mixtures and targeting moieties) nano-emulsions for drug delivery and personalized medicine. Khomami’s research group relies on development of multi-scale simulations strategies by integrating essential information from different scales, i.e., molecular (molecular dynamics), mesoscopic (Brownian dynamics) and continuum (finite elements and spectral techniques) to uncover the underlying physical principles of poorly understood phenomena in these diverse areas as well as predicting system/process level features. In turn the simulation results are coupled with detailed experiments to elucidate important phenomena in a variety of processes.

To date, Khomami’s research has resulted in more than 100 refereed Journal publications and more than 75 invited presentations at universities in the US and abroad as well as national and international conferences including a keynote lecture at XIV International Congress of Rheology in 2004 and a Plenary lecture at the 77th Annual meeting of the Society of Rheology in 2005.

Khomami is a member of number of professional societies as well as a number steering and award committees. He also serves on the editorial board of Journal of Rheology, Applied Rheology and Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics.

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Daniel J. Klingenberg

Dan is a professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois-Urbana in 1991. Following a one-year postdoc at the University of British Columbia, he joined the faculty of Chemical (and now Biological) Engineering at the University of Wisconsin in 1992. He is currently the associate chair of the Rheology Research Center at the University of Wisconsin. His research focuses on understanding and controlling the structure and rheology of particulate suspensions. Specific areas of interest include electro- and magnetorheological fluids, and flexible fiber suspensions. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 1995, and has been recognized for teaching by receiving the UW Polygon Engineering Council Outstanding Instructor Award three times.

Dan has been an active member of The Society of Rheology since starting his academic career. He is currently a Member-at-Large of the executive committee. Dan has chaired numerous sessions at annual meetings, has served on and chaired the Bingham award committee, has served on the Nominations committee, and was the technical program co-chair (with Prof. R. C. Armstrong) for the 1999 Annual Meeting. He is currently the technical program co-chair (with Prof. M. D. Graham) for the 2007 Annual meeting.

See also Klingenberg’s web page.

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Patrick T. Mather

Patrick T. Mather received his B.S. degree in Engineering Science (1989) and M.S. degree in Engineering Mechanics (1990) from Penn State University. He then pursued a PhD in Materials from U.C. Santa Barbara, where he studied flow behavior of liquid crystals with Dale S. Pearson, graduating in 1994. Mather then took a civilian position in that Air Force Research Lab, first at Edwards Air Force Base (California) and then at Wright Patterson Air Force Base (Ohio). During this time, Pat undertook the study of hybrid inorganic-organic polymers and became interested in shape memory polymers. In 1999, he joined the faculty of Chemical Engineering and Polymer Science at University of Connecticut, attaining tenure in 2003. Then, in 2004, Mather joined the faculty of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University as an Associate Professor, where pursued research in the area of functional polymers, ranging from shape memory polymers, to fuel cell membranes, to biomaterials. Recently, he accepted the position of Milton and Ann Stevenson Chair of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering at Syracuse University, where he will lead the launch of a new center on biomaterials.

Pat is author of over 75 peer-review articles, 2 edited books, four (5) US patents (14 pending) and has delivered over 85 invited lectures around the world. Mather has been honored with several awards including the Rogers Corporation Award for Outstanding Teacher in Chemical Engineering (UConn) in 2003, an SPE Medical Plastics Division, ANTEC 2002 Best Paper Award in 2002, a School of Engineering Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (UConn) in 2001, and an NSF CAREER Award for “Orientational Dynamics in Flows of Thermotropic Polymers” for 2001-2006. He recently won the outstanding teaching award (2005-06) for engineering from Case’s Undergraduate Student Government.

Pat has been an active member of the Society of Rheology since 1991 and has happily served the Society by chairing sessions on numerous occasions, serving as the technical program chair with Ralph Colby in 1998, and serving on the membership committee since 2000. He the current chair of the membership committee and is the planned local arrangements chair for the 2011 annual meeting in Cleveland, OH. Pat would enjoy serving Society of Rheology further as a member-at-large.

See also Mather’s Research Group.

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Jeffrey F. Morris

Jeff Morris received his BS from Georgia Tech in 1989, and a Ph.D. from Caltech in 1995, all in Chemical Engineering. He then spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Shell Research laboratory KSLA in Amsterdam. He was a member of the faculty in Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech from 1996-2002 and from 2002-2004 was with Halliburton Energy Services, where he served as a Senior Scientific Advisor. He joined the Levich Institute at the City College of New York as an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering in 2005. He also holds Visiting Professor positions at the Université de Paris Sud (at the Laboratory FAST) and Université de Provence (at the Laboratory IUSTI). A goal which Jeff has in pursuing a position on the Executive Committee is to foster greater industrial and academic interaction in areas of Society of Rheology member interest.

The Morris research group is interested in developing a fluid mechanical description appropriate for complex fluids, particularly suspensions and colloids. Applying simulation and experiment, combined with ideas of statistical and continuum mechanics, the research seeks to develop understanding of flow-induced microstructure and the resulting mixture rheology. Of particular interest are rheologically-induced phenomena unique to mixtures, including bulk particle migration. In addition, the group is interested in particle-induced gelation, drop formation and film flows, and emulsions.

See also Morris’s web page and Research Group.

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David C. Venerus

David C. Venerus is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology. For the past four years, he has served as Associate Chair for Graduate Affairs and prior to that he was Director of IIT's Center of Excellence in Polymer Science and Engineering for four years. Dave received his B.S degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Chemical Engineering, from Penn State University. One focus of his research has been on improving and developing experimental techniques that probe the non-linear viscoelastic behavior of entangled polymeric liquids. A second area of focus has been on the experimental investigation of anomalous heat and mass transport in complex fluids. Dave's research has resulted in 50 refereed publications and one U.S. patent. In 1997 and 2002, Dave has been a Visiting Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland. Several times during his tenure at IIT, Dave has received teaching awards in both the Department and the College of Engineering. Dave has been an active member of The Society of Rheology since starting his academic career. He has chaired numerous sessions at the Society's annual meetings, and was a Symposium organizer for the 2006 meeting in Portland. Dave is also a founding member, along with Jay Schieber and Wes Burghardt, of the Chicago Society of Rheology, which holds its annual meeting every summer at Wrigley Field.

See also Venerus’s web page.

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Norman J. Wagner

Norman J. Wagner is the Alvin B. and Julia O. Stiles Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware. Norm leads an active research group in the fields of rheology, complex fluids, polymers, applied statistical mechanics, nanotechnology and particle technology. His research focus areas include the effects of applied flow on the microstructure and material properties of colloidal suspensions, polymers, self-assembled surfactant solutions, and combinations thereof. This includes the development of new rheo-optic and rheo-SANS instruments, the former under commercial development and latter available at national user facilities (NCNR, NIST). He also leads the University of Delaware’s Rheological Sciences Laboratory, in the Center for Molecular and Engineering Thermodynamics, which is a shared user facility dedicated to the education of rheologists and the development of new rheological instruments and methods. Norm earned his Bachelors degree from Carnegie Mellon and Doctorate from Princeton University, both in chemical engineering, was an NSF/Nato Postdoctoral Fellow in Germany, and a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Lab prior to joining the University of Delaware in 1991. He was named a Senior Fulbright Scholar (Konstanz, Germany) and served as a guest Professor at the ETH, Zurich (1997) and the University of Rome (2004). He has received numerous awards, including the Siple Award in 2002 by the US Army for his joint development of shear thickening fluid composites as novel energy absorbing materials with the Army Research Laboratory. This technology, (STF-Armor™) is being commercialized to provide improved personnel safety protection for military, police, and first responders. Having published over 120 scientific publications and patents, he also serves on the editorial boards of five international journals including Journal of Rheology and Rheologica Acta. Norm has participated broadly in Society activities, including serving as local arrangements co-chair for the 66th annual meeting (1994) in Philadelphia with Antony Beris, teaching Society short courses, chairing the Education committee, as well as organizing technical symposia. He also has organized numerous “Tiger-Hen” Rheology Meetings of the Delaware valley rheology community since arriving at Delaware. He currently serves on the Bingham Award Committee and is a symposium organizer for the ICR2008. Norm has mentored many doctoral, masters, and bachelors students, many of whom are active participants in the Society.

See also Wagner’s web page.

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