Dominique Barthès-Biesel
Compiègne Université de Technologie, France
2019

Dominique Barthès-Biesel is Emeritus Professor at Compiègne Université de Technologie (UTC) in France. She graduated from Ecole Centrale de Paris in 1968 and obtained a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1972. She then joined the newly created Université de Technologie de Compiègne, of which she is a “founding mother”.

At UTC, she has been instrumental in the creation and development of education programs in Biomechanics and Bioengineering at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She introduced the concept of Graduate School in France, and demonstrated its feasibility and interest by creating the first such school at UTC… Every university in France has now an Ecole Doctorale (graduate school).

For 25 years, she has conjointly held a Professorship at Ecole Polytechnique (France) in the Department of Mechanics, where she also promoted the introduction of microhydrodynamics and biomechanics into the curriculum.

She has contributed to the development of a CNRS labeled research institute, the Biomechanics and Bioengineering Laboratory (BMBI) that she has chaired for 7 years. Under her chairmanship, the initial biofluid mechanics area of expertise of BMBI has expanded to include solid biomechanics.

She has served as Associate Director for Engineering at the French Ministry of Research and has sat on a number of national academic committees in France and abroad. She has been Associate Editor for the Journal of Fluid Mechanics for 10 years. She is presently the Chair of the World Council for Biomechanics, which has become incorporated as a non-profit organisation under her chairmanship.

On the research side, she is specialized in microhydrodynamics and complex fluids dynamics under low Reynolds number flows. She is internationally renowned for her pioneering and current work on the dynamics of microcapsules. She has authored over 260 publications and published two books.

She is a member of honor of the Societé de Biomécanique and recipient of three French national distinctions: Légion d’Honneur, Ordre du Mérite, Palmes Académiques.