Meet the new members of the Editorial Board

Read the profiles of Soft Matter's new Editorial Board members, Anna Balazs, Lennart Piculell, Alejandro Rey and Jan Vermant.

Anna Balazs

Anna C. Balazs is the Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Robert von der Luft Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her B.A. in physics at Bryn Mawr College and her PhD in materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After postdoctoral work in the Polymer Science Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh in 1987. Her research involves developing theoretical and computational models to capture the behavior of polymeric materials, nanocomposites and multi-component fluids in confined geometries. Balazs served as the Chair of the Division of Polymer Physics of the APS (2000–2001), co-Chair of the Spring MRS meeting (2000) and served on the APS Public Policy Committee. In addition, she is a Fellow of the APS.

Lennart Piculell

Lennart Piculell received his PhD at the Division of Physical Chemistry at Lund University in Sweden, where he now holds a position as full professor. He is the director of the Center of Excellence on “Organizing Molecular Matter” at Lund University - a center with long-term funding from the Swedish Research Council, dedicated to research on soft condensed matter. Lennart has published ca. 140 papers, including several reviews and book chapters. His research topics include polymer gels, polymer-particle phase behavior, and polymer–surfactant interactions in the bulk and at surfaces. He combines studies of carefully chosen idealized model systems with studies on considerably more complex formulations relevant to industrial applications.

Alejandro Rey

Professor Rey has been a faculty member at McGill University since 1988 following his undergraduate education at the City College of New York followed by a PhD at the University of California at Berkeley. A full professor, he has been re-appointed James McGill Professor of Chemical Engineering for a second term, until 2016. In 2006, he was the 20th Olaf A. Hougen Visiting Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and in 2009 was awarded the Cesar Milstein Fellowship. He is in the Editorial Board of Design and Nature, an ongoing executive member of the McGill Advanced Materials Institute, a member of the McGill Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Physiology and Medicine, the McGill Center for Self-Assembled Chemical Structures, the Engineering Research Center for Advanced Engineering Fibers and Films (CAEFF) at Clemson University, and the founder and Director of the McGill Materials Modeling Research Group. In 2008, he was awarded the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Direct Accelerator Grant Award and in 2009, he became the first winner of the Research Excellence Award of the Faculty of Engineering, McGill University.

Professor Rey's research interests include computational material science of structural and functional materials, thermodynamics, rheology and interfacial science of soft matter, biological materials, biological polymer processing, liquid crystal physics and new energy sources.

Jan Vermant

Jan Vermant is currently professor of Chemical Engineering at the K.U. Leuven in Belgium, where he is a member of the Division of Applied Rheology and Polymer Processing. Research in his group focuses on the science and engineering of soft matter, with an emphasis on the relation between rheological properties and the structure in complex fluids. His core expertise centers around the use of advanced rheological, rheo-optical and scattering techniques. Recently there is a strong focus on interfacial rheometry, flow phenomena at liquid interfaces and in thin films. Overall the study of the rheological properties of colloidal suspensions, especially those in the gels state and particle dispersed in viscoelastic liquids, is a constant in his research. He obtained his PhD in chemical engineering from K.U. Leuven in 1996, working with Profs. Mewis and Moldenaers. After this he held postdoctoral fellowships of Elf-Aquitaine and the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders, before joining the faculty in Leuven. He has enjoyed visiting appointments at the University of Delaware, Stanford University and Princeton University, in each case in the Chemical Engineering Department. His awards and honors include a Dupont Young Faculty Award (2002) and the 2007 ExxonMobil Chemical European Science & Engineering Award.

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