It was great to celebrate the end of the academic year with all (or most) of the members of the Breuer Lab, the Swartz Lab and the Breuer-Swartz labs. Sharon and Kenny have been collaborating together, sharing students and pizza for over twenty years!
Lab members Siyang, Eric, Yuanhang (lab member, emeritus) and Kenny at the 2023 DisCoVor meeting in Breckenridge CO.
Congratulations to our Post Doc Xiaowei He who has accepted a tenure track faculty position at the University of Utah! Xiaowei will start in January before heading out west!
Congratulations to Xiaozhou Fan who successfully defended his PhD thesis on Friday to a packed house!
Some new, and some long overdue welcomes to the lab. Last September, we welcomed three new PhD students: Eva Erickson, Anoop Kiran and Ronan Gissler who joined the PhD program from Ga Tech, SUNY Buffalo and Tufts. In January, we welcomed PJ Gaudio to the PhD program from U. Hartford, via Electric Boat; just this week, we welcomed Alex Gehrke – a new Post Doc – who just completed his PhD with Karen Mulleners at EPFL (Switzerland). Welcome to all of you!
Congratulations to Lab Alumnus Zijie Qu, now on the faculty at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, whose paper (from his PhD thesis) on high speed microrheology was published last week in Flow Measurement and Technology
This paper combines high speed imaging, Statistical Tracking Velocimetry, and microrheology to determine the elastic relaxation times of weakly viscoelastic polymer solutions. – Congratulations!
Our lab had an impressive showing at the APS/DFD meeting in Indianapolis this week. There were TEN papers from our group with first authors ranging from Post Docs, to recently graduated PhDs, to current PhDs and undergrads. 
Check out our lab lunch at a local Italian restaurant in the “Pope Room” (wait – which one is the pope, and which one is Kenny?). In addition to contributions from our lab, there was an equally fierce showing from the Brown Center for Fluid Mechanics – something like 50 people attending, not to mention alumni from Brown undergrad and grad programs who are now either students or professors in the field at institutions throughout the USA and the World. A particular highlight was Prof Monica Martinez Wilhellmus’ plenary talk to and audience of 2000, on the dynamics of Artic sea ice. – Congratulations to all!!
We are happy to report that a paper describing the design and performance of our new wind tunnel has been published in Experiments in Fluids. This paper outlines many of the innovative design features of this facility. Congratulations to lab members Xiaozhou Fan and Matteo di Luca who are co-authors on the paper. along with our friend and colleague Mark Drela at MIT, who contributed immensely to the design. Our facility, with 1.2 x 1.2 meter test section, is a “scale model” for the new MIT Wright Brothers wind tunnel which is almost exactly two times larger and has many of the same innovative features.
Congratulations to Xiaozhou! His paper on the power requirements for flapping flight appeared today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Alovely evening last night at Flatbread Pizza to celebrate so many achievements: Congratulations to Yuanhang in receiving his PhD. Bon Voyage to: Cameron Urban who is leaving us to attend graduate school at Cornell; to Sonja Friman who is moving to a new Post Doctoral position in Lund (Sweden) and to our four REU students – Dayna, Jared, Gabby and Caylen, who are returning to their respective universities to continue their studies. This has been an amazing summer – thanks to everyone!