Dr. Ramanan Krishnamoorti is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston with courtesy appointments in the Department of Chemistry and Department of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Houston. Ramanan received his PhD from Princeton University. His research interests are in the understanding of structure – processing – property relations for multicomponent polymer systems, with a focus on understanding the role of molecular structure, thermodynamics and dynamics on their phase behavior and processing. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Neutron Scattering Society of America.

Dr. Megan L. Robertson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston. Dr. Robertson received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Nitash P. Balsara. Dr. Robertson was a Senior Scientist at Rohm and Haas (now Dow Chemical) in Spring House, Pennsylvania and a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota, working with Marc A. Hillmyer. Dr. Robertson is the recipient of the Sparks-Thomas Award (ACS Rubber Division, 2018), NSF CAREER Award (2014), and University of Houston Undergraduate Research Mentor Award (2017), and is recognized as an ACS PMSE Young Investigator (2017). The Robertson Research Group works in diverse areas including sustainable polymers derived from renewable resources, biodegradable polymers, advanced resins for polymer composites, structure and dynamics of block copolymer micelles, antifouling polymers and polymer brushes, and thermodynamics of polyolefin and polydiene blends.

Dr. Tirtha Chatterjee is a Research Scientist at Dow Water and Process Solutions (DWPS), a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company. He joined Dow in 2010 after earning his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering in 2008 from the University of Houston followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His research interests include polymer nanocomposites, associative polymers and their interaction with colloidal particles, biopolymers solution and gel properties among others. Currently, his research focus is in developing novel polymeric membranes that are stable in extreme pH. Tirtha has two granted US patents, two book chapters and several peer-reviewed journal publications in the field of structure and rheology of polymer nanocomposites.

Dr. Sibani Lisa Biswal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University in Houston, TX and leads the Soft Matter Engineering Laboratory. Dr. Biswal’s research focuses on the fundamental understanding and application of soft matter systems. Research examples include directed assembly of colloidal systems, multiphase flows in microfluidic systems, and the understanding and manipulation of foams and emulsions related to enhanced oil recovery processes. She has a B.S in chemical engineering from Caltech (1999) and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Stanford University (2004). She is the recipient of an ONR Young Investigator Award (2008), a National Science Foundation CAREER award (2009), the Southwest Texas Section AICHE Best Fundamental Paper Award (2014), and the Professional Progress Award for the Rice ChBE Alumni (2017).

Dr. Vivek Sharma is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Before joining UIC in November 2012, he worked as a post-doctoral research associate in Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph. D. (Polymers/MSE, 2008) and M. S. (Chemical Engineering, 2006) from Georgia Tech., an M. S. (Polymer Science, 2003) from the University of Akron, and a bachelor's degree from IIT Delhi. Dr. Sharma's research interests broadly lie in optics, dynamics, elasticity, and self-assembly (ODES) of complex fluids and soft materials. At UIC, Dr. Sharma's Soft Matter ODES-lab combines experiments and theory to pursue the understanding of, and control over interfacial and nonlinear flows, focused on the interplay of (a) viscoelasticity and capillarity for printing applications and extensional rheometry, and (b) interfacial thermodynamics and hydrodynamics in fizzics (the science of bubbles, drops, thin films, jets, fibers, emulsions and foams). Dr. Sharma was selected as the Distinguished Young Rheologist by TA Instruments in 2015, and won the 2017 College of Engineering Teaching Award at UIC.