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Joel L. Plawsky is currently the department head of the Howard P. Isermann Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan and his M.S.CEP and Sc.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation, Joel worked optical fiber devices for Corning Inc. in their research division before returning to academia at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Joel’s research interests lie in the area of applied transport phenomena. Most of his work has focused on thin films, with applications in the semiconductor, photonics, and thermal management industries but he has also worked with biofilms and two-phase, flow boiling and liquid-liquid phase separating systems. Joel has supervised seven experiments aboard the International Space Station in the areas of advanced heat pipes and biofilm formation and is currently working on getting his eighth experiment ready for flight. Joel was a NASA Faculty Fellow in 1999 and 2000 and a visiting professor of chemical engineering at Delft University of Technology in 2002. While on sabbatical in 2003 at Marshal Space Flight Center, Joel worked on Shuttle tile repair formulations and thermal management systems for aerocapture. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He has served as the chairman of the Transport and Energy Processes Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers where he received the Herbie Epstein programming award. Joel is also the author of a textbook, Transport Phenomena Fundamentals, 3rd edition, published by CRC Press. He holds 9 patents in the areas of spouted bed technology for mixing, coating and water purification; photonic systems; and thermal interface materials.
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