Michael D. Graham is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and Harvey D. Spangler Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Dayton in 1986 and his PhD. from Cornell University in 1992. After postdoctoral appointments at the University of Houston and Princeton University, he joined the Chemical Engineering faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994. He chaired the department from 2006-2009.
Professor Graham’s research interests include the rheology and dynamics of polymer solutions and suspensions, especially under confinement; blood flow in the microcirculation; swimming microorganisms; and instabilities and turbulence in Newtonian and complex fluids. He is author of two textbooks: Microhydrodynamics, Brownian Motion, and Complex Fluids (Cambridge, 2018) and Modeling and Analysis Principles for Chemical and Biological Engineers (Nob Hill, 2013, with James B. Rawlings).
Among Professor Graham’s professional distinctions are the Best Student Paper Award from the Environmental Division of AIChE in 1986, a CAREER Award from NSF in 1995, the François Frenkiel Award for Fluid Mechanics from the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics (APS/DFD) in 2004, the Stanley Corrsin Award from APS/DFD in 2015, and a 2018 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the US Department of Defense. He has delivered the Allan P. Colburn Memorial Lecture at the University of Delaware, the Dale Pearson Lectures at UCSB, the Ronald F. Probstein Lecture at MIT and the Stewartson Lecture at the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium.
Professor Graham was an Associate Editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics from 2005-2012 and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics from 2013-2015. He is Vice President of the Society of Rheology.