Friday, December 1, 2017
2:00pm-3:00pm
Speaker: Jenn Stroud Rossmann
Affiliation: Lafayette College
Location: MC 102
Date and time: December 1, 2017, 2-3 PM
Abstract
The motion of fluids is often invisible, yet has implications for everything from cardiovascular health to the way a Wiffle ball wobbles and weaves. With numerical methods and experimental flow visualization, we can make visible the swirls and shear patterns that may foretell the risk of atherosclerosis – or of a curve ball’s wickedness. The resulting images are valuable teaching tools as well as scientific communication. In this talk I’ll describe my own work in both hemodynamics and aerodynamics, put this work in historical context, and discuss the way these visualizations of fluid flow can be interpreted and appreciated both scientifically and aesthetically.
Speaker biosketch
Jenn Stroud Rossmann is a professor of mechanical engineering at Lafayette College. She earned her BS and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and was formerly a faculty member at Harvey Mudd College. Her research interests include cardiovascular and respiratory fluid mechanics and interdiscplinary pedagogies. She co-authored an innovative textbook, Introduction to Engineering Mechanics: A Continuum Approach (CRC Press, Second Edition, 2015), and writes the essay series “An Engineer Reads a Novel” for Public Books. She is also a fiction writer whose work (in such journals as Cheap Pop, Literary Orphans, Tahoma Literary Review) has earned several Pushcart Prize nominations and other honors; her first novel is forthcoming in Fall 2018 from 7.13 Books.
