John F. Brady (chemical engineer)


John Francis Brady is the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and Executive Officer of Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He is a fluid mechanician and creator of the Stokesian dynamics method for simulating suspensions of spheres and ellipsoids in low Reynolds number flows.

Education and career

Brady was educated in chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Cambridge, England, and Stanford University. He completed his dissertation entitled Inertial effects in closed cavity flows and their influence in drop breakup advised by Professor Andreas Acrivos. Following his Ph.D, Brady was a NATO post-doctoral fellow at the Ecole Superiéure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, Paris, France.
Following his research in France, Brady joined the faculty in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor in 1981. He moved in 1985 to the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, which has been his academic home since.

Brady is an expert in fluid mechanics, rheology and transport phenomena, particularly for suspensions and complex fluids. Among his many accomplishments is the creation of Stokesian dynamics
with Georges Bossis. The Stokesian dynamics method allows the accurate and rapid simulation of the dynamics and rheology of suspensions of spherical particles at low Reynolds number.
The technique has been used by researchers world-wide to model suspensions and understand a variety of physical systems. Brady was an associate editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and the editor of the Journal of Rheology.

Awards and honors

He has received numerous awards and honors which include: