Suzanne Kresta joined the University of Alberta in 1992, after completing a doctorate at McMaster University. She has been an active member of the North American Mixing Forum, most notably serving as co-editor of the Handbook of Industrial Mixing (Wiley, 2004), as well as chairing various conferences and serving on the executive council. She was the winner of the NAMF Award for Excellence and Sustained Contributions in 2004.
Dr. Kresta's research interests lie at the interface between the fluid mechanics in a stirred tank, and achieving desired mixing results. On the fluid mechanics side, she has worked extensively on the characterization of turbulence, and the application of CFD (computational fluid dynamics) in stirred tanks. On the mixing process results side, she has considered the effect of the flow field on liquid-liquid dispersions, solids suspension, liquid drop dissolution, crystallization, mixing sensitive reactions, air entrainment, and the draw down of floating solids. Industrially, she has had long term collaborations with Lightnin, Kodak, Syncrude, EPCOR, and Umicore working on mixing applications in water treatment, oil sands processing, crystal production, nano-scale metal powder production, and the design of mixing equipment.
Dr. Kresta's most recent collaborations with CNRS, Toulouse, consider the definition of mixing and ways to break down complex industrial mixing problems to determine the interactions between mechanisms, phases, and scales of mixing.