European Society of Rheology (ESR)

The European Society of Rheology is open for everyone interested in rheology in all countries of Europe. Rheology is defined as the science of the deformation and flow of matter which means that rheology in some form enters almost every study of material properties. The ESR involves rheologists engaged in both industrial and academic research and development and is therefore a common meeting ground for engineers, physicists, chemists and biologists with a common interest in rheology

Suzanne Fielding is the 2025 Weissenberg Awardee

Suzanne M. Fielding studied Physics at Oxford University and graduated with honors in 1997. She then moved to Edinburgh, where she earned her PhD degree in 2000, working on linking aging and rheology in soft amorphous materials, under the guidance of Mike Cates, FRS and Peter Sollich. In the course of her PhD, she developed the popular soft glassy rheology (SGR) model and her very first publication (Journal of Rheology) in 2000 has had substantial impact in the field. From 2000 to 2003 she was postdoctoral research assistant in Leeds, working with Peter Olmsted. During that period she focused on the problem ofshear banding, and again her contributions (starting from the first on shear banding due to flow-concentration coupling) have been transformative and motivated many experimental studies. In 2003 she earned a 3-years EPSRC postdoctoral research fellowship in Theoretical Physics in Leeds and then in Manchester, and in the meantime she was appointed lecturer at the School of Mathematics at Manchester University (2005), from where she left in 2009 as Senior Lecturer, to hold the same position at the Department of Physics, Durham University. Suzanne was then promoted to Reader and Professor (2013) in the same Department. She currently leads their theoretical efforts in soft condensed matter physics with emphasis on rheology. 

Her main current areas of focus are flow instabilities of complex fluids (a central research theme throughout her career) and the rheology of elastoplastic materials with emphasis on plasticity, friction and yielding. She is known for choosing timely topics, and making substantial and profound contributions with inter-sectorial impact. For example, she has developed criteria for material response and stability phase diagrams for many different problems.

The outcomes of 20 years of independent research productivity can be characterized by different metrics. 66 publications (11 single-authored, 20 in rheology journals, 23 in PRL, 1 in PNAS, 5 reviews) have generated 5103 total citations and resulted in h=40 (Google Scholar, 18/12/2024). In recognition of her work she has received the Arthur B. Metzner early career Award of the Society of Rheology (2010), the Annual Award of the British Society of Rheology (2017) and the Journal of Rheology Publication Award of the Society of Rheology (2017). Among her various research grants, the two ERC (Starting/Consolidating and Advanced) stand out. She has given 71 invited presentations at international meetings and serves as Editorial Board Member in the Journal of Rheology and the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics. Suzanne has guest-edited a popular issue on Shear Banding for the Journal of Rheology and has served as member is various committees for International Meetings, the Society of Rheology, the British Society of Rheology, rheology and the European Research Council (where she has chaired a Starting Grant panel for several years).

Award Citation:

For transformative contributions to the understanding of viscoelastic flow instabilities and providing new insights on important rheological phenomena that improve experimental practice.

Safa Jamali is the 2025 Oldroyd Early Career Awardee

After earning a Master’s degree in rheology through a European Union network-based Masters program (Eurheo), Safa worked primarily with Joao Maia, first at U. Minho (Portugal) and then at Case Western Reserve University, and he was awarded his Ph.D. in Macromolecular Science and Engineering in Spring 2015 in the general area of adapting Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) techniques to simulate the nonlinear flow of rheologically-complex systems such as dense colloidal dispersions. After a two year postdoc at MIT with Bob Armstrong and Gareth McKinley, Safa Jamali was appointed as an assistant professor at Northwestern University in 2017, and promoted to associate professor in 2023.

Safa Jamali has made a wide range of multi-faceted and diverse set of contributions to the science and practice of rheology: from theoretical and fundamental contributions in suspension rheology, to bringing advances in AI/ML technologies to rheology in a meaningful way, and to developing computational and data-driven tools that are of utility to a wide spectrum of rheologists. Safa’s recent work as a junior faculty member at Northeastern University has brought AI/ML to complex fluids and rheology, and developed tools based on AI as robust methods for complex fluid modeling. This work has taken several pathways: from construction and detection of unbiased constitutive models for different complex fluids, to developing multi-fidelity platforms for highly accurate predictions of the rheological behavior of a given system through a general platform called “rheology-informed machine learning”. This recurring theme of his research has resulted in a series of papers in PNAS, Scientific Reports, Soft Matter, Journal of Rheology, as well as in the ESR’s flagship journal Rheologica Acta. Specifically, his work published in JoR (also featured on the cover) in 2021 has been both the most-cited and the most-read article of JOR over the past year, indicating the level of impact it has and will continue to make. Having established himself as a pioneer of data-driven techniques in rheology, Safa recently: (1) wrote a perspective article in the latest issue of the Rheology Bulletin (which appeared during the ICR in Athens), and (ii) co-edited a special issue of Rheologica Acta and wrote an editorial article on the topic which was published in 2023/2024. With the ESR recognizing the essential need in exploring and tailoring these new areas for rheological sciences, Safa has been the primary technical organizer/chair for this topical area at the annual meeting of SOR, as well as at the last ICR meeting in Athens, and continues to spearhead our community’s efforts in this direction.

Award Citation:

For contributions to the computational simulation and physical understanding of the rheology of dense suspensions and attractive colloidal systems, and for pioneering the development of machine learning techniques and physics-informed data-driven approaches to rheology and our understanding of complex multicomponent systems.

Access to Rheologica Acta

Access to Rheologica Acta and Applied Rheology is free for all individual members of the ESR. Please access Rheologica Acta via the 'Member area'.

All participants of the AERC (or ICR) of the past year are automatically individual members of the ESR until the next AERC.

Rheologica Acta Publication Award

At every AERC or ICR, the editors of Rheologica Acta present the publication award sponsored by Anton Paar. This award gets selected by three editorial board members based on a preselection by the editors and is aimed to highlight the type of work which the journal likes to see published.

The 2025 Rheologica Acta Publication Award is given to: Panagiota Bogri, Gabriele Pagani, Jan Vermant, Joris Sprakel, George Petekidis: Orthogonal superposition rheometry of soft core–shell microgels, Rheologica Acta (2024) 63:705–717.

The entire list of the Rheologica Acta Publication Awards and the Weissenberg Lecture papers can be found in the Archive.