Jan Vermant

ETH Zürich

Chemical Engineer

Fellow, Elected 2016

Jan Vermant is currently Professor of Soft Materials at ETH Zürich. Professor Vermant received an M.S. from KU Leuven in 1991 and a Ph.D. from KU Leuven in 1996, both in Chemical Engineering. He began his career at KU Leuven in 2000 as an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering. From 2011 to 2013, he was the Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. In 2014, he began his current position at ETH Zürich.

Professor Vermant’s primary research areas include dispersion rheology and interfacial rheology. His contributions to interfacial rheology include the development of new experimental methods for measuring the properties of surfaces, morphological control of complex fluid interfaces, and theoretical analysis of non-Newtonian interfacial flows. His work has impacted the understanding of the role of shape anisotropy in self-assembly of particles at fluid-fluid interfaces and bacterial swarming in the presence of Marangoni stresses. Professor Vermant has also worked extensively on instrumentation design for interfacial rheology. He is well- known for the development of the “double-wall ring” interfacial shear rheometer, which allows one to convert conventional rotational rheometers into highly sensitive devices for the measurement of interfacial rheometric material functions. He is also responsible for some of the finest measurements of interaction forces between particles trapped at oil-water interfaces, which are fundamental to understanding mechanisms of particle stabilization in Pickering emulsions. Recently, Professor Vermant has studied the dynamics of biological monolayers and bilayers, focusing on the problem of lung surfactants. His work established important scaling laws for the viscoelasticity of domain-structured monolayers. Additionally, he led a team that investigated the relative roles of Marangoni stresses and interfacial rheological stresses on thin films stabilized by artificial lung surfactants. He has been a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Rheology, Applied Rheology, the Journal for Food Process Engineering, Rheologica Acta, Langmuir, Soft Matter, and the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics. For his work, he has received several awards including the DuPont Young Faculty Award in 2002, the FWO-ExxonMobil European Science & Engineering Award in 2007, the Journal of Rheology Publication Award in 2009, and the Lars Onsager Medal and Professorship in 2016.