Anke Lindner

Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie de la Ville de Paris

Physicist

Fellow, Elected 2025

Anke Lindner is currently a Professor at the Physics department of the University Paris Cité and performs her research at the PMMH laboratory of the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris. After a Masters in Physics at the University of Bayreuth she obtained a PhD from Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris in 2000. She was appointed assistant professor at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris in 2003 and became full professor in 2013.

Anke has made important and original contributions to the field of rheology and particularly on the flow of complex suspensions using innovative microfluidic approaches. A key component of Anke’s work is the development of well controlled model systems often relying on recent microfabrication techniques and microfluidic flow control that she coupled with advanced particle tracking and microscopic observation methods. The development of original microfluidic rheometers opened new perspectives to directly link in the same platform microscopic particle dynamics and macroscopic suspension properties. Her work is often performed in close collaboration with theory and modelling groups.

Among her key findings are measurements of the shear viscosity of active suspensions, using a microfluidic rheometer of unprecedented resolution. Anke has further used her combined knowledge of confined flows and rheology of dilute polymer solutions to develop a serpentine microrheometer to detect very small normal stress differences based on the onset of a viscoelastic flow instability. The insight she provided has also helped understand and control flow instabilities through curvature and boundary conditions. However, she is probably best known for her extensive and beautiful work on the flow of flexible filaments transported in various flow types and the direct link she established between morphological transitions of individual filaments and changes in the macroscopic suspension rheology.

She has received several awards for her work, including an ERC Consolidator grant in 2015, the Maurice Couette prize of the French Society in 2019, and the Silver Medal from the French CNRS in 2021. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society in the Division of Fluid Mechanics since 2019.

Anke served as a member at large in the executive committee of the Society of Rheology from 2019- 2021 and was technical co-chair of the SoR Winter meeting in Tampa in 2017. She has successively been Delegate of the Individual Members, Secretary and Vice-President of the European Society of Rheology (ESR) and will become president in 2025. In 2016, she guest edited an issue on “Microfluidic rheology” for “Biomicrofluidics”, and she is currently part of the editorial board of the Journal of non- Newtonian fluid mechanics and of Physical Review Fluids. She has organized many sessions on Microfluidics and Micro-Rheology or Active and Living Matter at international rheology conferences.