Ewoldt presents Beckman Director's Seminar

MechSE Professor Randy Ewoldt was the invited presenter for the Beckman Institute's first Director's Seminar of the academic year.

Ewoldt presented his research on “Squishy materials toolbox: Complex fluids” at noon today, September 1, in Beckman and via Zoom.

From 3D printing to fire suppression and flow batteries, non-Newtonian fluids can achieve diverse objectives, but the complexity of material behavior introduces challenges to design, engineer, and predict performance. His lecture focused on the survey of useful rheological complexity along with organizing principles and design methods as he and his researchers consider the following questions: How can non-Newtonian properties be useful? What properties are needed? How can we get those properties?

Ewoldt is also a Kritzer Faculty Scholar, a part-time faculty member at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and an affiliate faculty member at the Materials Research Laboratory. He conducts fundamental research in fluid mechanics, rheology, and soft matter. He is the winner of numerous awards for research and teaching accomplishments, including the PECASE award from the White House. He received his BS in mechanical engineering in 2004 from Iowa State University, and his MS in 2006 and PhD in 2009, both in mechanical engineering, from MIT. He completed his postdoc at the University of Minnesota. In 2018, he was a Guest Professor at ETH-Zürich.

Ewoldt regularly lectures at rheology short courses in the U.S. and Europe.

The publication “Designing Complex Fluids” is accessible at: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-fluid-031821-104935.