Kraynik elected SoR president

Andy Kraynik has taken office for a two-year term as president of the Society of Rheology and plans to focus on maintaining the high quality of society membership benefits, including its journal and meetings.

Kraynik succeeded Susan Muller (see Physics Today, December 2003, page 80 ) and took office last October after the society’s annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada. In an interview last month with Physics Today, he said he wants to sustain the high level of service to the society that Muller provided during her term as president.

“When a new president comes in, we always joke, ‘Don’t mess it up,’ ” he said with a laugh. “Susan Muller was just absolutely superb in every way.…Our society is incredibly high functioning. Our dues are $40 a year and that includes Physics Today and the Journal of Rheology.”

According to Kraynik, society membership, domestic and international, totals about 1600 and boosting the number of student members is among his principal aims. Incentives for students include lowered annual membership dues and student travel grants, which pay for four nights of lodging for every society meeting.

Organizing the SoR’s International Congress on Rheology from 3 August to 8 August 2008 in Monterey, California, is also a major task for him while he is in office, Kraynik said. The meeting takes place every four years, and the 2008 session is the first one to be held in the US in at least 30 years, he added.

A principal member of Sandia National Laboratorie’s technical staff in the multiphase transport processes division in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Kraynik received his PhD in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1973. He joined Sandia in 1976, working in a variety of materials science and engineering science divisions. Kraynik joined the SoR in 1973, and in addition to rheology, his areas of interest include the microrheology of gas–liquid foams and liquid–liquid emulsions, the micromechanics of cellular solids, and non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, viscometry, and polymer processing.

The society’s new vice president is Robert K. Prud’homme (Princeton University). A. Jeffrey Giacomin (University of Wisconsin–Madison) retained his position as secretary and Montgomery T. Shaw (University of Connecticut, Storrs) was reelected treasurer. John F. Brady (Caltech, Pasadena) was elected editor of the society’s Journal of Rheology. The new member-at-large on the society’s executive committee is Daniel J. Klingenberg (University of Wisconsin–Madison); Timothy Lodge (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis) and Lynn Walker (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) were reelected.