Pier Luca Maffettone

University of Naples Federico II

Chemical Engineer

Fellow, Elected 2018

Pier Luca Maffettone, Full Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Naples “Federico II”, where he is Chairman of the Department of Chemical-Materials-and-Production Engineering. Visiting scientist at the University of Delaware, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and at the Stanford University. he is currently member of the Editorial Board of Rheologica Acta and of the Journal Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics. His main research activity is focused on modeling and simulation of the flow behavior of soft matter. He analyzed the rheology of liquid crystalline polymers within the framework of the rigid rod model of Doi and Hess, both in bulk and in monolayers, and predicted the occurrence of “Rheo-Chaos” in shear flows. He proposed a successful toy model for the flow-induced deformation of droplets immersed in Newtonian and/or viscoelastic liquids. The predictions of that model were used as a rheological guide in several polymer blends and emulsion applications. Work on cross-flow migration of particles suspended in viscoelastic liquids has brought to the development of Rheo-Engineered microfluidics for Lab-on-a-chip applications. He is the author of nearly 150 among publications in refereed journals and book chapters, all of them on rheological subjects.