Contact Information
- Office Location: FCIEMAS 3217
- Email Address: christian.aponte.rivera@duke.edu
Education
- Ph.D. Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering / Cornell University (2017)
- M.Sc. Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering / Cornell University (2015)
- B.S. Chemical Engineering / University of Puerto Rico (2012)
- Honors
- Inducted into the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society (Spring 2018)
- The Ephrahim Garcia Graduate Student Excellence in Mentoring Award, Cornell University (Fall 2017)
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRFP Spring 2013)
- Colman Graduate Fellowship, Cornell University (Fall 2012)
- Sage Fellowship, Cornell University (Fall 2012)
Research Interests
My research focuses in transport phenomena and microscale flows. In particular in the computational and theoretical study of micro-scale transport in charge polymers and colloidal suspensions. My current interest are in developing models that predict the transport and flow properties of complex coacervates made from oppositely charged polyelectrolytes. Understanding these systems is important due to their current and potential technological applications (e.g. in the food, personal care and pharmaceutical industries). From a more fundamental standpoint, complex coacervates have been implicated in the formation of biological assemblies (e.g. bio-adhesives), which makes understanding their non-equilibrium properties an important problem for many biological systems. Other research interest are in the behavior of charged elastomers and particle-polymer mixtures.