Professor Stephen Haswell awarded a Doctorate of Science

Professor Stephen Haswell, Chair of Microfluidics and Sensors in Deakin’s Centre for Regional and Rural Futures (CeRRF) has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Plymouth.

Professor Haswell completed his seminal research in the field of microfluidics and lab on a chip technology. His thesis entitled ‘The development of microfluidic based processes’, which represents approximately half of the 220 papers he has published during his 30 year academic career, was examined by four international experts in the field.

The compendium of papers describe some of the earliest studies in the field of microfluidics which helped to defined the fundamental spatial and temporal control of reagents under a non-turbulent, diffusion limited mixing regime within micron scale reactor channels.

This work subsequently supported the emergence of flow reaction chemistry as a new area of academic research and the associated commercialisation of related technology which represents today a vibrant business sector.

In the latter half of his thesis, Professor Haswell’s publications describe the research that contributed to the establishment of multifunctional integrated Lab on a Chip technology, which is now an exponentially growing field of translational research spaning biomedical, environmental, agricultural and industrial applications.

The research described in the thesis, owes much to the dedication and ingenuity of around 60 PhD students and 30 post-doctoral research fellows and has been presented in over 80 plenary lectures at conferences worldwide.

Find out more about CeRRF.