Jay D. Schieber

llinois Institute of Technology

Chemical Engineer

Fellow, Elected 2017

Prof. Jay D. Schieber is professor of chemical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He also holds courtesy appointments in the departments of physics and applied mathematics. Prof. Schieber graduated Cum Laude from the University of Illinois ̶ Urbana, with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, in December of 1982. He went on to receive a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Wisconsin ̶ Madison, in August of 1989. Following the completion of his doctorate, Prof. Schieber went on to become a Postdoctoral Fellow, first in the physics department of Universität Freiburg in Germany, then in the chemical engineering department of McGill University in Canada.

Many of Prof. Schieber’s most important contributions to the field of rheology have been in the theory of entangled polymer dynamics. Almost two decades ago he developed a revolutionary theory that treats entanglements as dynamic variables and models them using “slip-links”. This approach allows for dynamics such as fluctuations, entanglement destruction and creation, and constraint release to all be handled in a self-consistent way. The slip-link model has been shown to make quantitative predictions of both linear and non-linear viscoelastic behavior for a number of entangled polymer systems.

In addition to his work in entangled polymer dynamics, Prof. Schieber has contributed significantly to several other areas of rheology and soft matter. In the area of microbead rheology, he resolved several theoretical and conceptual issues with the analysis of the widely-used experimental technique developed by the Weitz group at Harvard. Prof. Schieber also collaborated for nearly two decades with David C. Venerus, also of the Illinois Institute of Technology, in studying flow-induced anisotropic thermal conduction in polymeric materials. This combined theoretical and experimental work has resulted in detailed measurements of components of the full thermal conductivity tensor in flowing polymer liquids and stretched elastomers and yielded several important insights on the molecular mechanisms that lead to their anisotropy. Recently, Prof. Schieber has been working in the field of associating polymers; this work has lead to a deeper understanding of the underlying molecular models and has initiated the development of efficient methods for using Brownian dynamic simulations in such complex systems.

In addition to his extensive career in research, Prof. Schieber is a founder and the current director for the Center for Molecular Study of Condensed Soft Matter and he served as director for the Polymer Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology from 2004 through 2007. He has also been a visiting professor at several universities both within the US and abroad. Prof. Schieber was recognized for his excellence in teaching with several awards. He received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the University of Houston in 1992, Outstanding Professor of the Year from AIChE in 1993, the William Langdon Excellence in Teaching Award in 1999, and the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Departmental Teaching Award in 2002 and 2005.