Rate My Professor Thomas Powers

Thomas R. Powers is Professor of Engineering and Professor of Physics at Brown University. He received S.B. degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, where his thesis on fluctuating bilayer membranes was advised by Professor Phil Nelson. After completing his doctorate, Powers held postdoctoral positions in the physics departments of Princeton University and the University of Arizona under Professor Ray Goldstein, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University with Professor Howard Stone. He joined Brown University in 2000 as the first holder of the James R. Rice Term Chair in Solid Mechanics and Assistant Professor of Engineering, advancing to Associate Professor in 2006 and full Professor of Engineering and Physics in 2012. Powers has received the NSF CAREER Award (2001–2006), the T. Francis Ogilvie Young Investigator Lectureship in Ocean Engineering at MIT (2001), and election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in the Division of Fluid Dynamics.

Powers' research centers on the physics of soft matter, encompassing membranes, polymers, gels, colloids, and liquid crystals; active matter; biological physics including motility and biological materials; and mechanics such as low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics, elasticity of rods, plates, and shells, and fluid-structure interactions. Key publications include "Dynamics of filaments and membranes in a viscous fluid," Reviews of Modern Physics 82, 1607 (2010); "The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms," Reports on Progress in Physics 72, 096601 (2009, with E. Lauga); and "Topological structure and dynamics of three-dimensional active nematics," Science 367, 1120 (2020). He served as Associate Editor for Biological Physics at Reviews of Modern Physics from 2009 to 2014 and has been Associate Editor for Fluid, Geometric, and Solid Mechanics since 2020. Powers has presented invited talks at venues including the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (2024) and the Boulder School for Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (2022), and he participates in university committees such as the Tenure, Promotions, and Appointments Committee.