Rate My Professor Alexander Yarin

Alexander L. Yarin is the UIC Distinguished Professor and Richard and Loan Hill Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago, with a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He joined UIC in January 2006 as Professor, was promoted to Distinguished Professor in June 2014, and assumed the Richard and Loan Hill Professorship in October 2024. Previously, he held the position of Professor and Eduard Pestel Chair in Mechanical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa from June 1997 to December 2005. Earlier in his career, Yarin worked at the Institute for Problems in Mechanics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, advancing from Junior Research Associate in 1980 to Senior Research Associate by 1990. He also served concurrently as Lecturer at Moscow Physico-Technical Institute from 1985 to 1989 and Professor at Moscow Aviation Technology Institute from 1988 to 1990. Yarin earned his M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering with honors from the Polytechnic Institute of Leningrad (now Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University) in 1977, Candidate of Physico-Mathematical Sciences (Ph.D.) from the Institute for Problems in Mechanics in 1980, and Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences (habilitation) in 1989.

His research centers on novel nanotextured materials and their applications in filtration and separation, electrohydrodynamics for advanced manufacturing, and biomedical and forensic hydrodynamics. Key interests include electrospinning of nanofibers, co-electrospinning of core-shell nanofibers to produce turbostratic carbon nanotubes, micro- and nanofluidics, nanoparticle-based ink-jet printing for micro- and optoelectronics, deposition of nanocoatings on particles in plasma reactors, drop splashing, acoustic levitation, fluid mechanics and rheology, heat transfer, and biodegradable and stimuli-responsive polymers. Yarin has authored six books, including Free Liquid Jets and Films: Hydrodynamics and Rheology (1993), Fundamentals and Applications of Micro- and Nanofibers (2014), Collision Phenomena in Liquids and Solids (2017), and Materials and Electro-mechanical and Biomedical Devices Based on Nanofibers (2024). Notable publications feature Bending instability of electrically charged liquid jets of polymer solutions in electrospinning (Journal of Applied Physics, 2000) and Drop Impact Dynamics: Splashing, Spreading, Receding, Bouncing… (Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, 2006). He has received the Fellow of the American Physical Society (2016), two Springer Nature Editor of Distinction Awards (2025), UIC Teaching Award (2025), Hershel Rich Prize – Technion Innovation Award (2005), and Gutwirth Award (1999). Yarin serves on editorial boards of Experiments in Fluids, Physics of Fluids, Electrospinning, and others.