Instructors

Lynn M. Walker, Scriven Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, is the Director of the Rheological Measurements Short Course. She is also a program lead for IPRIME an industry-academia research partnership which connects companies from all over the world with academic researchers at UMN pursuing leading fundamental research. Her work in rheology includes a wide variety of complex fluids and characterization of flow induced structure. She is a Fellow of the Society of Rheology, the APS and AIChE.  She was the Editor-in-Chief for Rheologica Acta and is now an Associate Editor for AIChE Journal.

Christopher W. Macosko, Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, is the founding Director of the Rheological Measurements Short Course. He has aided development of several commercial rheometers and numerous test methods, and conducted research in polymer-polymer blends, nanocomposites, and the rheology of reacting systems. He received 2023 Goodyear Medal from the ACS Rubber Division, and the 2004 Bingham Medal of the Society of Rheology. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Michelle Calabrese, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, conducts research that seeks to understand the rheological behavior of surfactants and polymeric materials in the context of the underlying microstructure. Recent work has focused on flow instabilities such as shear banding, rheo-scattering methods, and the rheology and dynamics of polymer networks.

Xiang Cheng, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, studies soft materials and their associated mesoscopic structures. Research interests include dynamics of colloidal dispersions and active bacterial suspensions, non-equilibrium dynamics and flow behaviors of granular materials, and fluid mechanics in coating process. He received the Metzner Award from the Society of Rheology.

Cari Dutcher, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, fundamental studies of the dynamics of complex interfaces and multiphase flows, with a particular focus on environmental remediation. Using macro and micro-scale flow measurements and analytic mathematical modeling, we explore such areas as the thermodynamics of electrolyte-containing atmospheric aerosols, fluid dynamics and rheology of polymeric and particle-laden solutions, and microfluidics of multiphase flows.

Chris Ellison, Lanny and Charlotte Schmidt Chair Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, is also the Director of IPRIME, an industry-academia research partnership which connects companies from all over the world with academic researchers at UMN pursuing leading fundamental research. His research group focuses on polymer science and engineering, with emphasis at the intersection of polymer physics, processing and sustainability. He pursues rheological measurements in conjunction with polymer characterization and processing research.

David Morse, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, uses analytic and computational approaches to improve theoretical understanding of complex polymer liquids. Recent work has focused on self-assembled equilibrium structures of systems that contain block copolymers or on the dynamics and rheology of liquids and gels containing polymers with stiff backbones.  He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in polymer physics and rheology.

Ruth Cardinaels, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering at KU Leuven (Belgium) and part-time professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering at TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands). Her research deals with structure-processing-properties relations in a diverse range of polymer-based materials including hydrogels, nanocomposites, blends and emulsions. Her rheology interests include development of new measurement methods and setups as well as rheo-optical, rheo-spectroscopic and rheo-SAXS/WAXS characterizations to study in-situ structure formation. Ruth received the Distinguished Young Rheologist Award and instrument grant from TA Instruments in 2015, an ERC Starting Grant in 2020, and is the president of the Belgian Group of Rheology. She is associate editor for Physics of Fluids and section editor Rheology for Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science.

Randy H. Ewoldt, Randy H. Ewoldt, Alexander Rankin Professor, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), regularly teaches short courses on rheology in the USA and Europe. He conducts research in fluid mechanics, rheology, and soft matter. This includes yield stress fluids, polymer gels, biological materials, new measurement methods, data computation, and techniques for avoiding bad data. He received the PECASE award from the White House in 2017 and is a Fellow of ASME and the Society of Rheology.  He received the Metzner Award from the Society of Rheology.