Dr. Larson earned his BS, MS, and PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. He worked for 17 years at Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, NJ) before joined the University of Michigan (UM) faculty in 1996. There, his research interests have included the structure and flow properties of complex fluids, which include polymers, colloids, surfactant-containing fluids, and biological macromolecules. He has also served as Chair of UM’s Chemical Engineering Department.
He is a recipient of AIChE’s Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research (2000), the Bingham Medal from the Society of Rheology (2002), and the Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society (2019). In 2003, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He is a Fellow of the AIChE and has served on the steering committee of AIChE’s fluid mechanics group. He also serves on advisory board for the chemical engineering departments at Cornell University, the University of Minnesota, and Texas Tech University.