# Kenneth Breuer

Kenneth Breuer is an American academic. He is a Professor of Engineering and Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology at Brown University and the director of the Center of Fluid Mechanics at Brown University. Breuer is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and a Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology member.

## Early life and education

Breuer was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He grew up in London before moving back to the United States in 1976. Breuer earned his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Brown University in 1982 and a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1988 under the supervision of Märten Landahl and Joseph Haritonidis. His doctoral dissertation was titled "The Development of a Localized Disturbance in a Boundary Layer".
After completing his Ph.D., Breuer became a postdoctoral fellow in applied mathematics at Brown University with Lawrence Sirovich. He later joined MIT as a faculty member in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where he worked for nine years before returning to Brown University in 1999. He is currently co-director of the Center for the Mechanics of Undersea Science and Engineering (MUSE).
He was a visiting professor at the University of Queensland in 2005, Harvard University in 2008, Paris Tech in 2015, Imperial College and Tel Aviv University in 2019 and the University of Colorado in 2022.

## Research

His research focuses on various topics in fluid mechanics, animal locomotion, and turbulent flows. His work examines bat and bird flight, fluid-structure interactions, vortex dynamics, renewable energy harvesting, bio-inspired engineering, and micro-scale bio-fluid mechanics.
He holds patents related to Kinetic energy harvesting, Sensing and control of flows over membrane wings, and Free streamline airfoils, issued by the European Patent Office and United States Patent and Trademark Office.

## Selected publications

* Arkilic, E. B.; Schmidt, M. A.; Breuer, K. S. (1997). "Gaseous slip flow in long microchannels". Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems. 6 (2): 167–178. doi:10.1109/84.585795.
* Choi, Chang-Hwan; Westin, K Johan; S Breuer, Kenneth (October 1, 2003). "Apparent slip flows in hydrophilic and hydrophobic microchannels". Physics of Fluids. 15 (10): 2897–2902. Bibcode:2003PhFl...15.2897C. doi:10.1063/1.1605425.
* Darnton, Nicholas; Turner, Linda; Breuer, Kenneth; Berg, Howard C. (March 2004). "Moving Fluid with Bacterial Carpets". Biophysical Journal. 86 (3): 1863–1870. Bibcode:2004BpJ....86.1863D. doi:10.1016/s0006-3495(04)74253-8. PMC 1304020. PMID 14990512.
* Arkilic, Errol B.; Breuer, Kenneth S.; Schmidt, Martin A. (June 22, 2001). "Mass flow and tangential momentum accommodation in silicon micromachined channels". Journal of Fluid Mechanics. 437 (1): 29–43. Bibcode:2001JFM...437...29A. doi:10.1017/S0022112001004128.
* Song, Arnold; Tian, Xiaodong; Israeli, Emily; Galvao, Ricardo; Bishop, Kristin; Swartz, Sharon; Breuer, Kenneth (May 2, 2012). "Aeromechanics of Membrane Wings with Implications for Animal Flight". AIAA Journal. 46 (8): 2096–2106. Bibcode:2008AIAAJ..46.2096S. doi:10.2514/1.36694.
* Liu, Bin; Powers, Thomas R.; Breuer, Kenneth S. (December 6, 2011). "Force-free swimming of a model helical flagellum in viscoelastic fluids". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 108 (49): 19516–19520. Bibcode:2011PNAS..10819516L. doi:10.1073/pnas.1113082108. PMC 3241751. PMID 22106263.
* Breuer, Kenneth S., ed. (2005). Microscale diagnostic techniques. New York: Springer. doi:10.1007/b137604. ISBN 3-540-23099-8.
* Samimy, M.; Breuer, K. S.; Leal, L. G.; Steen, P. H., eds. (2004). A Gallery of Fluid Motion. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82773-6.
* Homsy, G. M.; Aref, H.; Breuer, K. S.; Hochgreb, S.; Koseff, J. R.; Munson, B. R. (2000). Multi-media fluid mechanics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78748-3.

## Outreach

Breuer co-authored Multimedia Fluid Mechanics (Camb. Univ. Press) and co-edited A Gallery of Fluid Motion (Camb. Univ. Press). He has also appeared on programs such as PBS' NOVA (Bat Superpowers, 2021; The four-winged dinosaur, 2008), NPR's Science Friday, the Discovery Channel's series Weird Connections, and the BBC series Invisible Worlds. His research has been featured in the New York Times, Discover, Smithsonian, National Geographic, ABC News and has been highlighted on the National Science Foundation website and the California Academy of Sciences. Dr. Breuer's bat flight research has been featured on the popular science YouTube channel SmarterEveryDay, hosted by Destin Sandlin.

## Awards and honors

* National Merit Scholar (1978)
* ONR Graduate Research Fellow (1982–1986)
* Harold and Esther Edgerton Chair at MIT (1996–1998)
* Midwest Mechanics Lecturer (2006–2007)
* Chair American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics (2012)
* Associate Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (2013)
* Fellow, American Physical Society (2010)
* Fellow, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2013)
* Dean's Award for Excellence in Mentoring in Engineering, Brown University (2020)
* Director, Center for Fluid Mechanics, Brown University (2020-Present)