(6hd) Tuning Complex Fluids from the Nanoscale

In mentoring my students and preparing them to be leaders in academia and technology, we will apply fundamental principles from chemical engineering to design devices for various applications ranging from waterborne contaminant sensing and treatment to low-cost diagnostics for use in under-resourced settings. Research in my lab will focus on tuning nanoscale and microscale properties to adjust and control macroscopic behavior. Tuning materials and transport properties from the microscale will enable improvement in process control in a variety of industrial settings, particularly those involving complex fluids, such as the pharmaceutical and personal care product industries, and to an increasing degree, the food processing industry as well. Beyond industrial applications, I will leverage my expertise in nano-material characterization and self-assembly to inform challenges in energy, the environment, and biomedical applications.

Research Experience:

My expertise lies in experimental complex fluid transport and dynamics, nanomaterial self-assembly and characterization, and colloidal phenomena, as they apply to a variety of applications. I am an Associate Research Scientist at Yale University, and the founding Director of the Yale Facility for Light Scattering (FLS), where I collaborate with researchers from throughout the University, advising students and postdocs in both experimental design and data interpretation. My scientific expertise has roots in soft matter physics, materials science and chemical engineering. My doctoral research focused on complex fluid flows in microchannels, taking inspiration from physiological fluids. During my postdoctoral research, I approached the study of petroleum engineering through the lens of colloidal aggregation and self-assembly along with complex fluid dynamics. My postdoctoral work alone led to ten first-authored publications, building upon my three prior first-authored publications, all in top journals of fundamental scientific research, including Soft Matter, Journal of Chemical Physics, Langmuir, and Physics of Fluids.

Teaching Interests:

Bringing everyday science into the classroom

The best and most memorable science lessons are often taught through demonstrations, hands-on in-class experiments, and through appealing to our everyday experiences. For instance, if we try mixing oil with a dilute acid, we’ll have some difficulty: oil and water don’t mix. But by adding a polymeric, zwitterionic surfactant to sit at the fluid interfaces and stabilize the system… voila! We have mayonnaise: made from olive oil, lemon juice, and protein from an egg. We’ve all eaten mayonnaise, know its taste and texture, but do we understand how the microstructure influences our macroscopic experience, how the simultaneous hydrophobic and hydrophilic nature of a protein allows otherwise immiscible fluids to become a homogeneous, smooth mixture? These questions of how microscopic behaviors influence macroscopic characteristics abound throughout science and engineering, notably in chemical engineering, physical chemistry, and materials science.

More than teaching to any test, I want students in my classroom to feel they are learning information that is relevant, useful, and immediate in their daily lives. While grades of course help assess progress and guide future lesson plans, students should leave the classroom feeling that they have connected to the course material in the present moment: not for the purpose of answering a problem on a problem set, but to understand their physical surroundings better. To that end, abstract concepts, or those describing microscopic phenomena need to be boiled down to physical, present concepts in one way or another. In materials science, this means explaining molecular crystal dislocations in terms of macroscopic ball bearing arrays in a demo. In thermodynamics class, we might stretch a rubber band next to our upper lip to demonstrate the equivalence of energy, entropy, and heat.