S. Majid Hassanizadeh - Biography#

Educated as a civil engineer in Iran, he earned his MSc and PhD degree in Water Resources, Department of Civil Engineering, Princeton University. His PhD thesis was on developing a novel approach for the development of basic theories of flow and transport in porous media based on a combination of volume averaging and thermodynamic principles (including the second law of thermodynamics).

After his PhD and some years as project engineer with a water consulting company, he joined the National Institute of Public Health and Environment (Bilthoven, The Netherlands). In 1995, he joined Delft University of Technology as Associate Professor and established his own research group in Environmental Hydrogeology. This research position allowed him to develop the field of geological porous media: i.e., he advanced theories for non-Fickian dispersion, high-concentration dispersion, Darcy’s law, non-equilibrium capillarity theory, and extended Darcy’s law for two-phase flow.

In January 2004, he moved with his group to Utrecht University, where he established an extensive computational and experimental laboratory, called Multiscale Porous Media Lab. In this facility, he performed flow and transport experiments from pore-scale (micron to millimeter) to column scale (centimeters) to bench scale (2 by 1 meter). He also started pioneering research on industrial porous media, such as fuel cells, diapers, inkjet printing on paper, and biological tissues. This inspired him to establish a new International Society for Porous Media (InterPore.org) in 2008 as a forum for researchers of geological, industrial, and biological porous media. As the Managing Director of the Society he has led it to maturity with thousands of members. Although formally retired in 2018, he has continued his full range activities as Emeritus Professor of Utrecht University and as key person in the InterPore Society. Recently, he has accepted an appointment as Senior Professor with the Stuttgart Center for Simulation Science (SIMTECH), Stuttgart University. His latest major project is a Proof of Concept project awarded by European Research Council, called Printing Medicine on Demand (PrintMed), based on the use of inkjet printing technology for the production of medical tablet with specific doses.