Kathleen J. Stebe

Kathleen J. Stebe received a B.A. in Economics from the City College of New York, Magna cum Laude, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the Levich Institute, also at CCNY, under the guidance of Charles Maldarelli. Thereafter, she spent a post-doctoral year in Compiegne, France working with Dominique Barthès Biesel. Professor Stebe joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where she rose through the ranks to become Professor and to serve as the department chair. In 2008, Professor Stebe joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania as the Richer and Elizabeth M. Goodwin Professor of Engineering and Applied Science. From 2008-2012, Professor Stebe served as the department chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. In July 2012, she assumed the post of Deputy Dean for Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Professor Stebe has been a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies; she has received the Robert S. Pond Excellence in Teaching Award at JHU, the Frenkiel Award from the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Physical Society, and was named a Fellow of the APS. Professor Stebe's research focuses on directed assembly in soft matter. Foci include particles interacting by capillarity at interfaces, and particle assembly in complex fluids, including liquid crystals and lipid bilayers. She is an expert in interfacial flows, with particular emphasis on surfactants and Marangoni effects. Other aspects of her research address dynamic surface tension, rheology of protein-laden interfaces, and the design of interfaces and bounding surfaces for biological and materials applications.