Prof Helen Wilson wins BSR Annual Award 2019

Rheology is the study of the flow of matter, primarily in a liquid state, but also as "soft solids" or solids under conditions in which they respond with plastic flow rather than deforming elastically. The BSR was founded as an informal British Rheologists' Club in 1940, and today has over 300 members from the UK and further afield. Their main objective is to promote the science and the dissemination of knowledge in the areas of pure and applied rheology to all, with members coming from many scientific disciplines including materials science, engineering, medicine, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science.

As part of this, an annual award is presented to a distinguished Rheologist, and in 2019 the award has been presented to Prof Helen Wilson in recognition of her wide ranging and seminal contributions to Rheology. Of particular note are Helen’s recent contributions and ongoing work related to the significant conceptual development of constitutive models for dense suspensions, contributions to the understanding of flow instabilities in viscoelastic fluids including theoretical prediction of the instability of highly shear-thinning channel flow and constitutive equations for polymer melt flow.

Helen is the first female Head of Mathematics at UCL and, in addition to many research achievements, she has made many substantial contributions to the rheological community, including organising numerous meetings, serving on council and subsequently as President of the BSR. As part of her award, she will present a keynote lecture at the BSR Mid-winter meeting.

Image credit - BSA

Links:

• Rheology - wikipedia
• British Society of Rheology - website
• Prof Helen Wilson - UCL Profile
• Department of Mathematics