SOR '09 Report

I attended this year’s Society of Rheology Meeting in Madison, WI last week. It was my first meeting since the 2005 meeting in Lubbock, TX and my first meeting as a representative of ConAgra Foods. Here is a list of this year’s sessions…

1. Biorheology and Rheology in Biological Systems

2. Emulsion, Blends, and Multiphase Systems

3. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics and Stability
4. Gels, Glasses, and Jammed Systems
5. Industrial and Complex Systems Rheology
6. Microrheometry and Microfluidics
7. Molecular Modeling and Simulation in Rheology
8. Self-Assembled Systems and Interfacial Rheology
9. Suspensions and Colloids
10. Polymer Solutions and Melts
11. Viscoplasticity and Soft Solids
12. Local chair PDA: iPhone (minimum memory 16 GB)

Because of my current interests, I concentrated on presentations that discussed food. There were 9 presentations with the word “food” in the abstract, and I was able to attend 8 of them; two talks had a conflict. (This system was flawed; I missed a talk on dough rheology because the authors did not use the word “food” in their abstract.) Generally speaking, the food-related talks discussed extensional techniques, as those techniques can be directly applied to processing, including food processing.

I heard from several people that the Society would like to improve its outreach to industry. They held a roundtable discussion on industrial jobs. Because of my schedule, I was not able to attend. If any readers would like to share their experience, either leave a comment or send me an email. (As shown below, outreaches to industry are not new; the ’99 meeting also had a session on industrial rheology.)
Being a small meeting, the trade show was also small. Exhibitors included Anton Paar, TA Instruments, Malvern Instruments, ATS RheoSystems, and Thermo Haake (all the standard rotational rheometer manufacturers), Formulaction, Brookfield, Stony Brook Scientific, AIP, Xpansion Instruments, and RheoSense Instruments.

(comparisons to older meetings after the jump)

For comparison, here are the sessions from the ’05 meeting...

1. Fluid Mechanics and Instability
2. Suspensions and Colloids
3. Biological Systems
4. Rheology at a Microscopic Scale
5. Self-Assembled Systems and Associating Fluids
6. Dilute Solutions
7. Multiphase Fluids
8. Entangled Melts and Solutions
9. Experimental Methods
10. 50 Years of WLF: Glassy Polymers & Related Systems

For additional comparison, here are the sessions from the ’99 meeting, which was also held in Madison at Monona Terrace…

1. Blends and Block Copolymers
2. Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics
3. General Session
4. Heterogeneous Systems
5. Industrial Rheology
6. Liquid Crystals and Liquid Crystalline Polymers
7. Rheology of Polymer Melts and Solutions
8. Polymer/Particle Mixtures
9. Shear-free Flows
10. Viscoelasticity of Synthetic and Biological Polymer Solutions and Gels
11. Rheology of Solids
12. Local chair PDA: Palm Vx (5 MB memory)