MAE Distinguished Speaker Series 2026 Seminar on Fluid Mechanics is Timeless: From Thin Films Flows to Physical Chemistry and Biophysics

03 Mar 2026 02.30 PM - 03.30 PM LT3 (North Spine, NS4-02-32) Current Students, Public

Professor Howard Stone

Neil A. Omenn ’68 University Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Princeton University, United States

This seminar will be chaired by Prof Zhou Kun.

Seminar Abstract

One feature of education is that it can provide a basis for life-long learning and strategies for problem solving.

Many subjects provide an avenue for this kind of inquiry, so I will focus on themes around fluid mechanics. In this talk, first I will provide a glimpse of various problems my research group has worked on in recent years, with a focus on qualitative ideas. Then, I will turn to a couple of quantitative problems involving thin film flows and fluid mechanics questions that arise in modern studies in cellular biology and biophysics, including properties of biomolecular condensates and viscous properties of the cell membrane.

Speaker's Biography 

Professor Howard Stone received the B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from UC Davis in 1982 and the PhD in Chemical Engineering from Caltech in 1988. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge, in 1989 he joined the faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. In July 2009 Howard moved to Princeton University where until 2024 he was the Donald R. Dixon ’69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He is now the Neil A. Omenn ’68 University Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Howard’s research interests are in fluid dynamics, broadly interpreted. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is past Chair of the Division of Fluid Dynamics. He was the first recipient of the G.K. Batchelor Prize in Fluid Dynamics in 2008 and he received the American Physical Society’s Fluid Dynamics Prize in 2016 . He has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (2009), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011), the National Academy of Sciences (2014), the Royal Society (United Kingdom) as a Foreign Member (2022), and the American Philosophical Society (2022).

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