Professor Meinhart will extend his pioneering work on extremely small scale particle image velocimetry (PIV) to study flows in micro flow systems. Effective fluid mixing at these very small scales is a qualitatively different phenomenon than the familiar macroscopic scale mixing. The ability to record the associated velocity fields in microscale mixing will be of considerable importance for the development of micro-bioanalytical instruments and other devices which will depend upon "chaotic advection".
Professor Meinhart will coordinate his research with his instructional contributions. These will include his involvement with the University of California - Santa Barbara Educational Outreach Program in which he will bring the interesting aspects of Micro Electrical-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) to persons in the K-12 through graduate school programs.
