“Think mechanistically.”
Title: Goodwin Professor of Applied Science and Engineering Courses: Heat and Mass Transport and Interfacial Phenomena Focus Areas: Soft Matter and Complex Fluids; Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology
Professor Stebe is interested in complex fluid interfaces far from equilibrium from a fundamental and engineering viewpoint. In the Stebe Lab, she studies directed assembly by energies stored in soft matter to make new, reconfigurable materials.
What do you teach, and what excites you most about it? I teach a core undergraduate course on Heat and Mass Transfer and an elective course on Interfacial Phenomena. In both, I am excited about teaching students to think mechanistically about non-equilibrium phenomena and to develop their intuitions as engineers and applied scientists.
What surprises students most? There are natural length scales and time scales that emerge that do not depend on the specifics of a system but rather depend on the underlying material constants. These ideas are often new to the students and allow them to understand ideas like how confinement and other effects will change system dynamics. I show them these ideas through dimensional analysis and use intuition to build the bare bones of a solution before we solve things exactly.
Helping Students Find Their Way Everyone has different challenges. Some are intimidated by analysis. Others need to see the solution graphically. I try to make the classroom and office hours spaces where students can express their doubts so that we can discuss the concepts from many viewpoints.
A Favorite Classroom Moment My favorite classroom moments are the final project presentations in the interfacial phenomena class. Student teams present projects on using colloidal and interfacial phenomena to develop materials that address a societal need. By the end of the term, students are at ease with each other and ask each other interesting questions on mechanism, state of the art, fundamental underpinnings, and practical implications. It is like a high-quality research symposium.
What’s a memorable question a student has asked you that made you stop and think? “Why?”
If your course had a tagline, what would it be? Think mechanistically.
What should students carry long after graduation? Intuition.
Looking back, what do you hope students carry with them long after graduation? I hope they carry with them a sense of confidence that they can understand how complex instruments work.
