Jeff Morris is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the Levich Institute for Physicochemical Hydrodynamics at CUNY City College of New York (CCNY). He has served as the technical program co-chair of the 2009 Society of Rheology (SoR) Annual Meeting, as well as serving as member and chair of both the SoR Nominating and Bingham Medal Committees.

Statement

Rheology is full of challenges and opportunities. At the intersection of materials processing and theoretical physics, work in rheology offers opportunities to explore fundamental questions while directly contributing to technological developments. Since the soft material dynamics issues in rheology bridge from the molecular to the process scales, this is an engineering science critical to rapidly developing fields such as advanced ceramics and additive manufacturing, as well as to traditional fields from food to materials packaging to petrochemicals.

To bring opportunities to its members, it is crucial that SoR maintain its strengths and expand its reach. The Journal of Rheology and the SOR National Meetings are critical foundations: maintaining their health and vitality is of the highest priority. I seek also to leverage SoR’s welcoming atmosphere to grow our membership and increase its diversity. To this end, I will energetically pursue industrial interaction and educational initiatives, to enhance awareness and understanding of the value of rheology. I believe SoR is a natural platform for intellectual development of members, and for their pursuit of career opportunities in industry, national laboratories, and academia. Through targeted symposia and connections with partner organizations – e.g., engineering societies and DSOFT in the American Physical Society (APS) – I seek to maintain intellectual leadership by interfacing engineering and basic sciences.

Biosketch

Jeff received his BSChE degree from Georgia Tech (1989) and MS and PhD (1995) from Caltech. He was a post-doc at Shell Research in Amsterdam, and has worked industrially for Halliburton Energy Services. He has been at CCNY since 2005. His research interests are in the rheology and fluid mechanics of suspensions, primarily using approaches based in simulation and statistical physics to develop models of suspensions and related soft materials. He has served as the Secretary-Treasurer of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (2018-2021), chair of CCNY ChE (2013-1016), and is the recipient of the 2022 Weissenberg Award of the European Society of Rheology as well as the 2023 Bingham Medal of the SoR. For 2023-2026, Jeff was named to the inaugural class of Fellow-Ambassadors by the French CNRS.

Maryam Sepehr is a research scientist at Chevron Oronite Company, with 27 years of experience in rheology, including 5 years performing fundamental research and 22 years applying rheology to new product development, processing, formulation and characterization of polymers, lubricating oils, polymer composites and nanocomposites as well as bio-based thermoplastic and polymer-based adhesives. She has successfully advanced new product developments and solved product performance and process related problems, in various industries, such lubricating oils, adhesives, and nanocomposites. She is a Chemical Engineer with a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal. She was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow from 2004-2006, then a Research Officer from 2006-2008 at the Industrial Materials Institute, National Research Council Canada. She then joined Avery Research Center (Pasadena, CA), where she worked for 4 years as Rheology and Thermal Analysis Team Leader. In 2012, she joined Chevron Oronite Company, the Viscosity Index Improver team as Research Scientist.

Maryam has been member of The Society of Rheology since 2002 and has been actively volunteering since 2009. Within The Society, she has served as Member at Large of The SoR Executive Committee (2015-2016 and 2022-2023), organized the technical program, with co-chair Amy Shen, for the 86th SoR Annual Meeting in Philadelphia (2014). She has served on (2009 – 2017) and chaired (2018 – 2021) The SoR Education committee, organized short courses at annual meetings. She has served on the Diversity and Inclusion Ad Hoc/Standing committee, and as The SoR Representative on AIP Liaison Committee for Under-Representative Minorities, LCURM. Maryam has organized, for 7 years (2014-2021), AIP Industrial – Students forum during The SoR Annual Meetings, as main organizer, seeking sponsors, panelists, and organizing annual events. Maryam is also a member of the Canadian Society of Rheology (since 2007) and Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (since 2015).

I have been conducting rheological research at NIST for the past 25 years. Throughout my career, my primary interest has been the measurement of non-equilibrium phenomena in soft matter, with interests in diverse areas such as liquid crystal dynamics, polymer slippage, confined emulsions and more recently crystallization and additive manufacturing. I have found that a rheological perspective is the key aspect of any problem that involves flow and deformation of a complex material and believe that the concepts and tools that emerge from the rheological community should find broad applicability in industrial applications.

The Society of Rheology has been my primary professional home for many years. I love its openness, collegiality, and all the flavors of rheology. Its focus on engaging and affordable meetings, student involvement, international outreach and stewardship of the premier rheological journal – all led by volunteers - make this a truly unique society.

Volunteering time for the Society is highly rewarding and worthwhile, and I have been happy to serve in various roles over the years. I am finishing up my second term as the Secretary, and would be honored to receive your support for another term.

S. Lisa Biswal is the William M. McCardell Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Senior Associate Dean in the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She has a B.S in chemical engineering from Caltech (1999), a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Stanford University (2004), followed by a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley, before starting at Rice in 2006 as an assistant professor, where she currently leads the Soft Matter Engineering Laboratory.

Within her research, Professor Biswal focuses on establishing connections between the rheological behavior of particulate and multiphase systems and the underlying physics governing colloidal assemblies, surfactant stabilization related to foams and emulsions, and the development of polymer composites for batteries. Her research endeavors aim to uncover new insights and ideas that can be used to engineer innovative solutions for a diverse range of technological challenges in the fields of materials and energy.

Over the past decade, Professor Biswal has actively engaged with The Society of Rheology and has made significant contributions to the organization. Her involvement spans various roles and responsibilities, including serving as co-Instructor for a SOR Short Course on the Structure and Rheology of Foams and Emulsions at the 90th Annual Meeting and Technical Program Chair for the 91st Annual Meeting. Currently, she serves as chair of the SOR Investment Committee, highlighting her commitment to helping SOR achieve long-term financial stability and continued growth. As treasurer, she will strive to provide accurate management and oversight of SOR’s financial undertakings.

Dimitris Vlassopoulos received his Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 1983. After a short industrial stay in Athens, he attended graduate school at Princeton University, where he received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in early 1990, working on the rheology of drag-reducing polymer solutions. He started his career at the Paulsboro Research Laboratory of Mobil R&D and later returned to Greece to fulfill his military service and eventually join the Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH) at the end of 1992 and the University of Crete, Department of Materials Science & Technology in 2002. He was a visiting Professor at the University of Delaware, ESPCI, ETH Zurich, DTU and the Université catholique de Louvain. He has over 250 publications and was the recipient of the Weissenberg award (2015) and the Bingham Medal (2019). Dimitris has served as co-editor of Rheologica Acta (2006-2011) and Associate Editor of Soft Matter (2015-2021). In 2022 he became the Editor of the Journal of Rheology. He vision is to maintain the tradition of excellence and enhance the impact of the journal by promoting it to the broader soft matter community.

The underlying theme of his research is the molecular engineering of soft matter by devising strategies based on the design of model systems with adaptable molar mass, macromolecular architecture or tunable interactions and bridging polymers and colloids. Current topics include nonlinear rheometry, topological constraints with emphasis on loops, supramolecular assemblies based on hydrogen bonding and the role of environment, associating polymer networks and vitrimers, jammed ultrasoft colloids, and high-pressure microrheology.

Cari S. Dutcher is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science (CEMS) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Dr. Dutcher received her B.S from Illinois Institute of Technology (2004) and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (2009), both in Chemical Engineering. Her research interests are in soft interfaces and multiphase systems, including aerosols, emulsions, and foams. She is a member of The Society of Rheology, American Association of Aerosol Research (AAAR), and American Chemical Society and currently serves on the AAAR Executive Board and the Editorial Board of Aerosol Science and Technology.

Dr. Dutcher is delighted to be nominated to serve as a Member at Large for The Society of Rheology. She has been actively involved in the society over the years, with service activities including the 92nd SOR Annual Meeting Technical Program Co-Chair with Patrick Underhill in Bangor, Maine (2021), Bingham Award Committee (2021-present), and Membership Committee (2013-2020). In 2017, Dr. Dutcher co-instructed the ‘Extensional Rheology’ short course with Nicolas Alvarez and Martin Sentmanat at the SOR annual meeting in Denver. Beyond SOR, she also contributes to hands-on tutorials and short course curriculum, including ‘Interfacial Rheology’ and ‘Microfluidics’ in the Rheological Measurements Short Course at the University of Minnesota.

Her group focuses on multiscale approaches for characterizing the thermodynamic and material properties of surfactant-laden interfaces. Since starting her faculty position in 2013, Dr. Dutcher has received awards such as the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, NSF CAREER Award, AAAR Kenneth T. Whitby Award and SERDP WP Project of the Year. In recognition of exceptional contributions to teaching, the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota awarded Dr. Dutcher the 2019 George Taylor Career Development Award. Prior to her faculty position, she was an NSF-AGS Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Air Quality Research Center at the University of California, Davis. While at UC Berkeley, she was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and an American Association of University Women Fellowship.

See also Complex Fluids and Multiphase Flows Laboratory

Mônica F. Naccache is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (PUC-Rio), where she served as head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at PUC-Rio, from 2014 to 2021. She was visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia, in 2007-2008. She has been a member of The Society of Rheology since 1994. Monica was founder of the Brazilian Society of Rheology (BSR), has served as president from 2017 to 2019, and is currently vice-president of the BSR. She organized four Brazilian Conferences on Rheology, the Workshop: Viscoplastic Fluids: From Theory to Applications in 2011 and was vice-chair of the 18th International Congress on Rheology, 2020. She currently serves at the Advisory Board of the Physics of Fluids Journal and served in the Editorial Board of Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering, from 2005 to 2014.

Mônica is a Mechanical Engineer and received her Master’s and DSc also in Mechanical Engineering at PUC-Rio. She has experience in the areas of fluid mechanics and rheology, focusing on numerical simulation of flows of non-Newtonian fluids, rheology of thixotropic and elasto-viscoplastic materials, and interfacial rheology. She has co-authored more than 65 publications in peer-reviewed journals and contributed as reviewer for Journal of Rheology, Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluids Mechanics, Rheologica Acta, Physics of Fluids, among others. Mônica has a strong collaboration with industrial partners, including energy companies and cosmetic industries. Mônica is vice-coordinator of the Rheology Group at PUC-Rio, a research group sponsored by Industry and Government agencies involving around 30 people including faculty, researchers, technicians, and students.

Simon A. Rogers is an Associate Professor and I. C. Gunsalus Scholar in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He has been a member of The Society of Rheology for over 16 years and is honored to be nominated to serve as a Member at Large.

His prior service to the SoR includes being local arrangements chair for the 2022 meeting in Chicago, which was the largest ever regular meeting of the Society of Rheology. He’s also served on the membership committee since 2020, and since 2022 has served as an SoR representative on the AIPP Publishing Partners Committee. He’s organized and chaired sessions at multiple SoR meetings as well as the International Congress on Rheology, and enjoys participating in the Rheology Research Symposium. In addition to his service to SoR, he is also an active member of Area 01J (Fluid Mechanics) at AIChE, serving on the Fluids Programming Committee since 2019 and serving as the 2023 Meeting Programming Chair. He’s also the local arrangements co-chair for the 2023 Viscoplastic Fluids meeting.

Rogers received his Ph.D., B.Sc. (Hons), and B.Sc. from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, all in Physics. His postdoctoral training was at the Foundation for Research and Technology, Hellas in Greece with Prof. Dimitris Vlassopoulos, the Forchungszentrum Jülich in Germany with Profs. Peter Lang and Jan Dhont, and the University of Delaware with Prof. Norm Wagner. During his time in Delaware, he was also the University of Delaware Center for Neutron Research (CNR) liaison with the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Neutron Scattering (NCNR). He conducts fundamental research in rheology using conventional rheometry and rheo-scattering techniques using X-rays, neutrons, and light.

His group has developed the theoretical and analytical concepts and experimental techniques of recovery rheology to study the rheology of thixotropic yield stress fluids, hydrogels, colloidal suspensions, and biological materials. His work is well known for the development of analytical methods for large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS). His research has been recognized by awards from ACS (Doctoral New Investigator), NSF (CAREER), and The Society of Rheology (Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award). His teaching has been recognized by awards from his department and college, and he was awarded the 2022 Campus Distinguished Promotion Award at UIUC. Since 2020 he has served on the Advisory Board for Physics of Fluids and has been a guest editor for the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics and Frontiers in Physics. He is a member of the SoR, APS, ACS, and AIChE.

Kelly M. Schultz is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Lehigh University. She has served The Society of Rheology in several different capacities throughout the years. She was on the membership committee from 2013 – 2019, serving as the chair of the committee from 2017 – 2019. In 2018, she also co-founded and began chairing the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, which was voted as a standing committee by an overwhelming majority in 2020. In 2019, she co-developed the annual Rheology Research Symposium, which provides mentoring, networking opportunities, career discussions and fosters diversity for our student members. This program will be run before every Annual Meeting. She was elected member-at-large in 2022 and is happy to be running for a second term. In addition to her service to SOR, she is also an active member of Area 01J (Fluid Mechanics) at AIChE serving on the Fluids Programming Committee since 2016, serving as the 2020 Meeting Programming Chair and serving as area Vice Chair (2021-2023) and Chair (2023-2025). She is also a Consulting Editor of AIChE Journal in the area of Soft Matter and the current Co-Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Colloidal, Macromolecular and Polyelectrolyte Solutions (2022-2024).

Dr. Schultz obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University in 2006 and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 2011 as a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow. While at Delaware, she was invited to speak in the American Chemical Society Excellence in Graduate Polymers Research Symposium and was selected as the Fraser and Shirley Russell Teaching Fellow. Following her PhD, she was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral research associate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She began her position as Assistant Professor at Lehigh University in 2013 and was named a P.C. Rossin Assistant Professor from 2016 – 2018. Dr. Schultz was named one of TA Instruments Distinguished Young Rheologists (2014), was awarded a NSF CAREER award (2018), the Lehigh University Libsch Early Career Research Award (2019), the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science Excellence in Research Scholarship & Leadership (2020) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award (2023) and the NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (2022).

Her current research studies materials during phase transitions, specifically gels during gelation and degradation. An area of interest is the degradation of new hydrogel materials developed for biological applications, such as wound healing and tissue regeneration. Her group develops bulk and microrheological techniques to measure how 3D encapsulated human mesenchymal stem cells degrade and remodel synthetic hydrogel scaffolds during motility. They have also developed techniques, through a collaboration with Procter and Gamble Co., combining environmental manipulation in microfluidic devices with microrheological characterization to characterize evolving colloidal gels used as rheological modifiers.

See also http://www.schultzlab.io/

Jonathan Seppala leads the Polymer Additive Manufacturing and Rheology Project, developing multi-modal and in situ measurements that enable control over the complex non-equilibrium material dynamics that characterize soft matter processing. His current research uses rheology, infrared thermography, polarized light, fracture mechanics, and neutron and x-ray reflectivity and scattering to study the polymer physics of thermoplastic additive manufacturing processes.

Prior service to SoR includes Session Organization (Additive Manufacturing) and co-creating the Rheology of Additive Manufacturing Short course with Leanne Friedrich.

Jonathan earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Technological University and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University, studying the rheology and thermodynamics of polymer nanocomposites. Following his Ph.D., Jonathan worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher studying thin film self-assembly of block copolymers and equilibrium dynamics of amphiphilic micelles at the University of Delaware. Before joining the Additive Manufacturing and Rheology Project, Jonathan studied ballistic witness materials and shear thickening fluids as part of NIST's Personal Body Armor Project.

Prof. Evelyne van Ruymbeke earned her Master’s (2000) and Ph.D. (2005) degrees at Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain, Belgium) working on developing a tube-based model to predict the viscoelastic properties of polymer melts. During her postdoctoral research project with Prof. Dimitris Vlassopoulos (IESL, FORTH, Greece) and as Researcher in the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS), she worked on understanding and modelling the viscoelastic properties of complex macromolecules and supramolecular polymer networks. Then, she joined DSM (Geleen, The Netherlands) for two years, as scientist in the Polymer Rheology and Processing Research department. Since October 2012, Prof. van Ruymbeke has been a Research Associate of the FNRS and Professor at UCLouvain working at the Institute of Condensed Matter and Nanosciences.

The overall objectives of her research group are to understand and model at the mesoscopic level the relationship between the composition of polymeric samples and their rheological behavior. Her interests include the study of the properties of supramolecular polymer networks and gels as well as of polymer networks characterized by two different dynamics. Her research has been recognized by several awards from The Society of Rheology (2011 and 2018: Journal of Rheology Publication Award, 2016: Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award, 2023: Fellow of the SOR).

She serves as an Associated Editor of Macromolecules (since 2021) and as an Editorial Advisory Board member of the Journal of Rheology, Soft Matter, Physics of Fluids, and Rheologica Acta. She was a Member at Large of the European Society of Rheology from 2020 to 2023, and is highly involved, as coordinator, in several European Doctoral Networks on reversible polymer networks.