Steve Wereley is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, ...

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and ...

. His areas of research include

Micro- ''Micro'' (Greek letter μ ( U+03BC) or the legacy symbol µ (U+00B5)) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of 10−6 (one millionth). Confirmed in 1960, the prefix comes from the Greek ('), meaning "small". The symbol for t ...

and

Nanofluidics Nanofluidics is the study of the behavior, manipulation, and control of fluids that are confined to structures of nanometer (typically 1–100 nm) characteristic dimensions (1 nm = 10−9 m). Fluids confined in these structures exhibit p ...

, Particle Image Velocimetry, Opto-microfluidics and

bio-MEMS Bio-MEMS is an abbreviation for biomedical (or biological) microelectromechanical systems. Bio-MEMS have considerable overlap, and is sometimes considered synonymous, with lab-on-a-chip (LOC) and micro total analysis systems (μTAS). Bio-MEMS is ...

. He is the co-inventor of micro-PIV.

Education

In 1990, Wereley completed his undergraduate degrees in mechanical engineering at

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University i ...

, and physics at

Lawrence University Lawrence University is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Appleton, Wisconsin. Founded in 1847, its first classes were held on November 12, 1849. Lawrence was the second college in the U.S. to be founded as a coeducati ...

. Wereley earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Chart ...

in 1992 and 1997, respectively. He spent two years working with Carl Meinhart at the

University of California Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the Un ...

, specializing in microfluidic diagnostic techniques.

Career

In 1999, Wereley became an

assistant professor Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree and gene ...

of mechanical engineering at

. In 2005, Wereley was promoted to

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the '' North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is ...

and in 2010 to professor.

Deepwater Horizon

Wereley played an important role in assessing the

Deepwater Horizon oil spill The ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill (also referred to as the "BP oil spill") was an industrial disaster that began on 20 April 2010 off of the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered ...

in the summer of 2010. On May 13, 2010, he was among the first scientists to report that the actual flow rate of oil out of the well was considerably higher than the official estimate at the time. After the disaster the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling found that the "...Wereley estimates (and at least some of BP‘s internal estimates) proved to be significantly more accurate than the initial official estimates." Wereley was invited to brief the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment about his findings. He was also asked to join the Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG), a group of scientists assembled by the

Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the m ...

to address the flow rate issue. The FRTG issued a final peer-reviewed report on July 21, 2010, and contributed to the official US government oil flow rate estimate announced on August 2, 2010. In October 2010 Wereley was awarded the United States Geological Survey Director's Award for his work on the FRTG team.

Publications

Books

* N.T. Nguyen and S.T. Wereley
Fundamentals and Applications of Microfluidics
Artech House, Boston, (First edition, 2002; second edition, 2006). () * M. Raffel, C. Willert, S.T. Wereley, J. Kompenhans
Particle Image Velocimetry: A Practical Guide
Springer, New York (2007). ()

Journal articles

* A. Kumar, S.J. Williams, H.S. Chuang, N.G. Green and S.T. Wereley,
Hybrid opto-electric manipulation in microfluidics—opportunities and challenges
, Lab on a Chip (2011). ''cover article'' * Y.H. Kim, C. Cierpka and S.T. Wereley,
Flow field around a vibrating cantilever: coherent structure education by continuous wavelet transform and proper orthogonal decomposition
" J. Fluid Mech., Vol. 669, pp. 584–606. (2011). * S.T. Wereley and C.D. Meinhart,
Recent Advances in Micro Particle Image Velocimetry
" Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Vol. 42 (2010). * C.D. Meinhart, S.T. Wereley, and J.G. Santiago,
PIV Measurements of a Microchannel Flow
" Exp. Fluids, Vol. 27, No. 5, 414-419, (1999). * J.G. Santiago, S.T. Wereley, C.D. Meinhart, D. Beebee, and R.J. Adrian,
A particle image velocimetry system for microfluidics
" Exp. Fluids, Vol. 25, No. 4, 316-319, (1998). * S.T. Wereley and R.M. Lueptow,
Spatio-temporal character of nonwavy and wavy Taylor Couette flow
" J. Fluid Mech. Vol. 364, 59-80, (1998).

References

External links

Steve Wereley's Purdue web page

Wereley's Purdue microfluidics channel

Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wereley, Steve American mechanical engineers Living people Purdue University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Washington University in St. Louis alumni McKelvey School of Engineering alumni Lawrence University alumni Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni