Chris Boyce

Chris Boyce examines the fundamentals of multiphase flows to spark advances in energy, health, and the environment. He uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computational modeling to gain insights into complex systems. Boyce teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in fluid mechanics.

Boyce discovers and characterizes instabilities and other flow anomalies existing in multiphase granular flows and analyzes how they couple with chemical reactions. He develops and utilizes MRI and computational techniques to study these flows and seeks to be a leader in the exploitation of MRI capabilities to provide insights into engineering systems by truly seeing inside of them. The fundamental physics insights from Boyce’s research are relevant to understanding geological flows surrounding volcanos and earthquakes as well as developing new technologies in the energy, pharmaceuticals, mining, and filtration industries. Because of the many length scales, applications, techniques, and areas of science involved in Boyce’s work, he collaborates with a variety of engineers, physicists, chemists, and geologists. In the long term, Boyce aims to transfer insights and techniques from his work into areas more directly relevant to physiology and human health. 

Boyce received a BS in chemical engineering and physics from MIT in 2011. He studied as a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where he earned his PhD in 2015 and won the Danckwerts-Pergamon Prize for the best PhD thesis in chemical engineering. He held postdoctoral positions at Princeton University and ETH Zurich before joining the faculty of Columbia Engineering in 2018.