Russel Chosen to Head SoR

The Society of Rheology has announced William B. Russel as its new president. Russel, who began a two-year term last October, succeeds Gerald G. Fuller.

Russel received both a BA in chemical engineering and an MChE from Rice University in 1969 and a PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 1973. After a postdoctoral year at Cambridge University, he joined the Princeton University faculty in 1974 as an assistant professor, receiving full tenure there in 1979. From 1987 to 1996, he chaired the chemical engineering department and served as director of the Princeton Materials Institute (PMI) between 1996 and 1998. Currently, he is an A. W. Marks ‘19 Professor at Princeton, a joint appointment of the chemical engineering department and PMI. Russel’s research focuses on the phase behavior and rheology of colloidal dispersions with recent application to associative polymers, film formation from latex dispersions, and polyelectrolytes as stabilizers.

The society’s new vice president is Susan Muller (University of California, Berkeley). Others taking office are Jeffrey A. Giacomin (University of Wisconsin–Madison), who retains his position as secretary of SoR; Montgomery T. Shaw (University of Connecticut), who was elected as treasurer of SoR; and Morton M. Denn (City College of the City University of New York), who was reelected as editor of the society’s Journal of Rheology. Donald Baird (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Lisa Mondy (Sandia National Laboratories), and Robert Powell (University of California, Davis) will also serve two-year terms as members-at-large on the society’s executive committee.