Fluids and Energy

A pebble bouncing a few times on a lake. A sandcastle. The splash of a stone falling into the water. The wake left by a boat. Waxing skis. But also… the “whispers” of microparticles. A trickle of water flowing through a carbon straw just a few nanometers wide. The hourglass shape of aquaporins. The memory of ionic flows… The energy of osmosis.

This Prévert-style inventory of a few disparate phenomena attests above all to the richness of a scientific field: that of fluids and their movements. Yet these phenomena share a common thread: fluids that flow—either freely or constrained by surfaces with diverse physicochemical properties—or even confined to the ultimate scales of a few angstroms. Never has matter been so thoroughly explored as fluids.

A fluid is matter “that flows.” Fluid physics can thus be understood as the study of these flows, what is commonly referred to as fluid mechanics… In reality, fluid physics covers a much broader field of research. It extends to the study of all their properties—thermodynamic, electromagnetic, and chemical—as well as their phase changes, interfacial properties, and the statistical and quantum origins of emergent properties at the scale of the molecules that make up fluids. It is a multifaceted field that is constantly expanding and reinventing itself. It is also a fundamentally multidisciplinary field at the interface between physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and more. Finally, it is a field that lies at the very heart of society and its progress.

The research and teaching activities of the “Fluids and Energy ” Chair will explore the frontiers of fluid physics: frontiers in terms of scales, from the macroscopic to the molecular; thematic frontiers between scientific disciplines; and frontiers related to societal challenges. Above all, the Chair will serve as a meeting place.