Robert Prud-homme
Princeton University
Robert K. Prud'homme is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Director of the Engineering Biology Program at Princeton University. He received his BS at Stanford University and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison under Professor Bob Bird. He has served on the executive committees of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Materials Science Division and the U.S. Society of Rheology. Currently he is the President of the U.S. Society of Rheology. He has served as the chair of the Technical Advisory Board for Material Science Research for Dow Chemical Company, which directs Dow’s materials research programs, and he was on the Board of Directors of Rheometric Scientific Inc., the leading manufacturer of rheological instrumentation. His awards include the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science Outstanding Teaching Award, the Sydney Ross Lectureship at RPI, the Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, the Merck Lectureship at the University of Puerto Rico – Mayaguez, and the Midland Macromolecular Institute Visiting Professor in Midland Michigan. He has been the organizer and Chair of the Gordon Conference on Ion Containing Polymers, and the Society of Petroleum Engineers Forum on Stimulation Fluid Rheology, in addition to organizing numerous sessions at AIChE, ACS, and SOR meetings. He is currently the Director of the Princeton-University of Minnesota-Iowa State NSF NIRT Center on nanoparticle formation. His research interests include rheology and self-assembly of complex fluids. Systems of interest are biopolymer solutions and gels, surfactant mesophases, and polymer/surfactant mixtures. The goals of the studies are to understand how weak molecular-level interactions can be used to tune macroscopic bulk properties and phase behavior.