Recently, Professor Alan Giacomin from Queen’s University, Canada, who also serves as the chief editor of Physics of Fluids, visited BEBC. On Sep. 4^th, he delivered a report entitled “Exploiting Large-Amplitude Oscillatory Shear Flow” in the 5th meeting room in the School of Aerospace. On Sep. 6^th, he gave a talk entitled “The New Physics of Fluids”. In this talk, he mainly introduced the recent advances of the journal Physics of Fluids, faculties and students from BEBC attended this seminar.

Professor Alan Giacomin has been severing the journal Physics of Fluids as the editor for two years. As a famous journal in the field of fluid mechanics, this journal belongs to the publisher American Institute of Physics (AIP), and publishes papers on theoretical, numerical and experimental work on fluid mechanics. Professor Alan Giacomin introduced to us the improvement of this journal during the last a few years. The impact factor has been increased gradually and more and more Chinese researchers submitted their work to this journal. Professor Giacomin has a good sense of humor, and his talk always makes the audience laugh. Professor Alan Giacomin can speak English, French and some Chinese. During his talk, he even interacts with the audience with Chinese. At last, Professor Giacomin gave the audience his gifts, and the seminar  came to an end with joy and happiness.

After that, he was invited to visit the BEBC labs. BEBC members showed him our recent work on microfluidic chips and paper based diagnostics and had communicated some opinions with each other.

Introduction of the speaker

Dr. Giacomin, Professor of Chemical Engineering/Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada where he holds the title of Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Rheology. Born in Kingston, Professor Giacomin graduated high school on the island of Montreal.  He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chemical Engineering from Queen’s University in Kingston, before joining the Research Division at DuPont Canada.  He then earned a PhD in Chemical Engineering from McGill University under Professor John Dealy, his thesis titled “A Sliding Plate Melt Rheometer Incorporating a Shear Stress Transducer.” He joined the Mechanical Engineering faculty at Texas A&M University.  He has been Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, where for twenty years he chaired its Rheology Research Center. He has held visiting professorships at McGill University, the University of Sherbrooke, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Paris School of Mines, the National University of Singapore, Chung Yuan University near Taipei, Yunlin University, in southern Taiwan, and Shandong University in mainland China.  He married Marie, and they have a son David, and daughter, Caroline.  David is a civil engineer, and Caroline, a chemical engineer. He speaks English, French and some Mandarin Chinese.  His hobbies:  Chinese characters, expert witnessing for products liability and patent litigation, and his passions are cycling and ice hockey.  He is President of the Canadian Society of Rheology, and a former President of The Society of Rheology. Giacomin serves as sole Editor-in-Chief of Physics of Fluids.