Howard Stone won the first Batchelor Prize

Howard Stone, of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has won the first Batchelor Prize.  The newly established Prize is sponsored by Cambridge University Press and the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.  The award of US$25,000 will be presented at the International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM), taking place in Adelaide in August 2008.  Howard is iMechanica user number 96.

Howard Stone is recognised for the breadth and depth of his research over the ten-year period 1998-2007, and for his widely acknowledged leadership in fluid mechanics generally. He is particularly well-known for his pioneering studies in:

• microfluidics, including understanding the 'slip' boundary condiditon, control of mixing, and electroosmotic effects;
• foam drainage, especially the proposing and testing of a new, generalised foam drainage equation;
• surface tension and surfactant effects;
• biological fluid dynamics;
• colloidal dynamics.

He shows a remarkable capacity or the devising and analysis of simple model problems which lead both to important fundamental understanding and practical application, using theoretical, computational and experimental methods.

He has served the fluid dynamics community as Chair of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics in 2006, as Associate Editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics for ten years, and as advisor and mentor for numerous students (undergraduate as well as graduate) and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom are now embarked on distinguished careers of their own.