Steven Weinstein Headshot

Steven Weinstein

Professor

Department of Chemical Engineering
Kate Gleason College of Engineering
Program Faculty, School of Mathematics and Statistics
sjweme@rit.edu
585-475-4299
Office Location
INS-4107
Office Mailing Address
160 Lomb Memorial Drive Institute Hall Rochester, NY 14623

Steven Weinstein

Professor

Department of Chemical Engineering
Kate Gleason College of Engineering
Program Faculty, School of Mathematics and Statistics

Education

BS, University of Rochester; MS, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Bio

Dr. Steven Weinstein received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rochester and his MS and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked for Eastman Kodak Company for 18 years after receiving his Ph.D.. He is well published in the field of coating, and has focused on thin film flows, die manifold design, wave stability, curtain flows (flows in thin sheets of liquid), and web dynamics; he also has 7 patents in these areas. He co-authored a well-cited invited review article on Coating Flows in the prestigious Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics (2004, Vol. 36). Dr. Weinstein won the CEK Mees award for excellence in research and technical writing (1992; honorable mention 1998), the highest research award bestowed by Eastman Kodak Company, and was recipient of the Young Investigator Award from the International Society of Coating Science and Technology in 2000. He has served on the board of directors of this society since 2004. While at Kodak, Dr. Weinstein was also an Adjunct Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Rochester, an Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and an Adjunct Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. 

Dr. Weinstein joined the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in January of 2007, and along with teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in fluid mechanics and applied math, founded the Department of Chemical Engineering Weinstein in fall of 2008, and served as the department head until summer of 2023.  In addition to serving on a variety of college and university committees, he has taught chemical engineering courses on material balances in reactive systems, fluid dynamics, chemical thermodynamics, reactor design, separation processes, and applied mathematics. Dr. Weinstein also serves as a core faculty member in the Mathematical Modeling Ph.D. Program at RIT. He maintains his adjunct position at Cornell University, providing guest course lectures and performing research with collaborators there.

Research Areas 

Dr. Weinstein's current research areas are varied, collaborative, and often theoretical, although much of his recent work involves experimental coating applications. One recent theoretical focus is the examination of instabilities in spatially developing flows; this work is motivated by a need to control such flows in a variety of manufacturing processes with exacting tolerances that are disrupted by small disturbances. His work has examined long-time algebraic growth/decay in linear systems, a type of instability that has been largely unexamined in the prior literature, as well as the response of continually-forced absolutely and convectively unstable fluid systems. He has also recently co-developed the technique of asymptotic approximates that has been applied to a variety of problems in mathematical physics; asymptotic approximates are a new and highly powerful analysis technique that couples divergent series expansions about a given point, often with few terms, with an asymptotic behavior away from this point to obtain highly accurate analytical equations. 

For more details on these research areas, see the Barlow/Weinstein Asumptotics and Wave Instability Group.

Other theoretical areas in which he has focused via his collaborations are mapping techniques for ensemble averaging in statistical mechanics, coating die manifold design for shear thinning fluids, analysis of thermoelectric systems, adsorption of organic molecules on carbon nanotubes, oxygen diffusion into titanium dioxide nanotubes.  Dr. Weinstein has focused his experimental work on liquid curtain flows, and also on the benchtop scaleup of novel fluids to enable roll-to-roll coating.

sjweme@rit.edu
585-475-4299
Personal Links
Personal Website
ORCID
Curriculum Vitae
Google Scholar

Select Scholarship

Journal Paper
Barlow, N. S., W. C. Reinberger, and S. J. Weinstein. "Exact and explicit analytical solution for the Sakiadis boundary layer." Physics of Fluids 36. (2024): '031703. Print.
Naghshineh, N., et al. "On the use of asymptotically motivated gauge functions to obtain convergent series solutions to nonlinear ODEs." IMA Journal of Applied Mathematics 88. 1 (2023): 43-66. Print.
Huber, C. M., N. S. Barlow, and S. J. Weinstein. "On the two-dimensional extension of one-dimensional algebraically growing waves at neutral stability." Wave Motion 113. (2023): 103083. Print.
Naghshineh, N., et al. "Asymptotically-consistent analytical solutions for the non-Newtonian Sakiadis boundary layer." Physics of Fluids 35. (2023): 53103. Print.
Pia, A. Della, et al. "On the shapes of liquid curtains flowing from a non-vertical slot." Journal of Fluid Mechanics 974. (2023): A18-1 to A18-22. Print.
Theisen, Eric A. and Steven J. Weinstein. "An Overview of Planar Flow Casting of Thin Metallic Glasses and its Relation to Slot Coating of Liquid Films." Journal of Coatings Technology and Research 19. 1 (2022): 49-60. Print.
Han, Haixiang, et al. "Multiscale hierarchical structures from a nanocluster mesophase." Nature Materials 21. (2022): 518-525. Web.
Reinberger, W. C., et al. "On the power series solution to the nonlinear pendulum." The Quarterly Journal of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics 75. 4 (2022): 347-369. Print.
Huber, C. M., N. S. Barlow, and S. J. Weinstein. "On the response of neutrally stable flows to oscillatory forcing with application to liquid sheets." Physics of Fluids 34. (2022): 104106. Print.
Naghshineh, N., et al. "The shape of an axisymmetric meniscus in a static pool: effective implementation of the Euler transformation." IMA Journal of Applied Mathematics 88. (2023): 735-764. Print.
Torsey, Bridget M., et al. "The effect of pressure fluctuations on the shapes of thinning liquid curtains." Journal of Fluid Mechanics 910. (2021): A38-1 to -15. Print.
Rame, Enrique, Steven J. Weinstein, and Nathaniel S. Barlow. "On the shape of air–liquid interfaces with surface tension that bound rigidly rotating liquids in partially filled containers." IMA Journal of Applied Mathematics 86. (2021): 1266-1286. Print.
Belden, Elizabeth R., et al. "Asymptotic Approximant for the Falkner-Skan Boundary-Layer Equation." Quarterly Journal of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics 73. 1 (2020): 36-50. Print.
Barlow, Nathaniel S. and Steven J. Weinstein. "Accurate Closed-form Solution of the SIR Epidemic Model." Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena 408. (2020): 132540. Print.
Weinstein, Steven J., et al. "Analytic Solution of the SEIR Epidemic Model via Asymptotic Approximant." Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena 411. (2020): 132633. Print.
Gascon, Katherine N., Steven J. Weinstein, and Michael G. Antoniades. "Use of Simplified Surface Tension Measurements To Determine Surface Excess: An Undergraduate Experiment." Journal of Chemical Education 96. (2019): 342-347. Print.
Ruschak, Kenneth J. and Steven J. Weinstein. "Accurate Approximate Methods for the Fully Developed Flow of Shear-thinning Fluids in Ducts of Non-circular Cross Section." Journal of Fluids Engineering 141. (2019): 111202-1 to -7. Print.
Weinstein, Steven J., et al. "On Oblique Liquid Curtains." Journal of Fluid Mechanics 876. R3 (2019): R3-1 to R3-9. Print.
Huber, Colin, et al. "On the Stability of Waves in Classically Neutral Flows." IMA Journal of Applied Mathematics 85. (2020): 309-340. Print.
Beachley, R., et al. "Accurate Closed-form Trajectories of Light Around a Kerr Black Hole Using Asymptotic Approximates." Classical and Quantum Gravity 35. (2018): 20500: 1-28. Print.
Barlow, Nate S., Steven J. Weinstein, and Joshua A. Faber. "An Asymptotically Consistent Approximant For the Equatorial Bending Angle of Light Due To Kerr Black Holes." Classical and Quantum Gravity 34. (2017): 1-16. Print.
Ruschak, Kenneth J. and Steven J. Weinstein. "Model For the Outer Cavity of A Dual-Cavity Die with Parameters Determined From Two-Dimensional Finite-Element Analysis." AIChE Journal 64. 2 (2018): 1-38. Print.
Barlow, N. S., et al. "On the Summation of Divergent, Truncated, and Underspecified Power Series via Asymptotic Approximants." Quarterly Journal of Mechanics and Applied Mathematics 70. 1 (2017): 21-48. Print.
King, K., et al. "Stability of Algebraically Unstable Dispersive Flows." Physical Review Fluids 1. 7 (2016): 073604-1 to -19. Print.
Schultz, A. J., et al. "Reformulation of Ensemble Averages via Coordinate Mapping." Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 12. 4 (2016): 1491-1498. Print.
Close, T., et al. "Rapid Reversible Oxygen Scavenging at Room Temperature with Electrochemically-Reduced Titanium Oxide Nanotubes." Nature Nanotechnology 10. (2015): 418-422. Print.
Dichiara, A. B., S. J. Weinstein, and R. E. Rogers. "On the Choice of Batch or Fixed-Bed Adsorption Processes for Wastewater Treatment." Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research 54. (2015): 8579-8586. Print.
Barlow, N. S., et al. "Analytic Continuation of the Virial Series Through the Critical Point Using Parametric approximants." Journal of Chemical Physics 143. 7 (2015): 071103-1 to -5. Print.
Barlow, Nathaniel S., Brian T. Helenbrook, and Steven J. Weinstein. "Algorithm for Spatio-temporal Analysis of the Signalling Problem." IMA Journal of Applied Mathematics 82. (2017): 1-32. Print.
Stevens, Robert J., Steven J. Weinstein, and Karuna S. Koppula. "Theoretical Limits of Thermoelectric Power Generation from Exhaust Gases." Applied Energy 133. (2014): 80-88. Print.
Dichiara, Anthony B., et al. "Free-Standing Carbon Nanotube/Graphene Hybrid Papers as Next Generation Absorbents." Nanoscale 6. (2014): 6322-6327. Print.
Barlow, Nate S., et al. "Critical Isotherms from Virial Series Using Asymptotically Consistent Approximants." AIChE Journal 60. 9 (2014): 3336-3349. Print.
Lee, S. H., et al. "Gravity-driven Instability of a Thin Liquid Film Underneath a Soft Solid." Physical Review E 90. (2014): 1-9. Print.
Sandoz-Rosado, E. J., S. J. Weinstein, and R. J. Stevens. "On the Thomson Effect in Thermoelectric Devices." International Journal of Thermal Sciences 66. (2013): 1-7. Print.
Ruschak, K. J. and S. J. Weinstein. "A Local Power-law Approximation to a Smooth Viscosity Curve with Application to Flow in Conduits and Coating Dies." Polymer Engineering and Science 5. 10 (2014): 2301-2309. Print.
Barlow, N.S., S.J. Weinstein, and B.T. Helenbrook. "On The Response of Spatially Developing Flow to Oscillatory Forcing With Application to Liquid Sheets." Journal of Fluid Mechanics 699. (2012): 115-152. Print.
Shetty, S., K.J. Ruschak, and S.J. Weinstein. "Model for a Two-Cavity Coating Die with Pressure and Temperature Deformation." Polymer Engineering & Science 52. 6 (2012): 1173-1182. Print.
Barlow, N S, et al. "An Asymptotically Consistent Approximant Method With Application to Soft and Hard-sphere Fluids." Journal of Chemical Physics 137. (2012): 204102-1 to -13. Print.
Rogers, R. E., et al. "Solution-phase Adsorption of 1-pyrenebutyric Acid Using Single-wall Carbon Nanotubes." Chemical Engnieering Journal 173. 1 (2011): 486-493. Print.
Norton, M. M., R. J. Robinson, and S. J. Weinstein. "Model of Ciliary Clearance and the Role of Mucus Rheology." Physical Review E 83. 1.1:011921 (2011): 1-12. Print.
Published Article
Barlow, N. S., B.T. Helenbrook, S.P. Lin and S.J. Weinstein.“An Interpretation of absolutely and convectively unstable waves using seriessolutions.” Wave Motion, 47.8 (2010): 564-582. Print. *
Theisen, E. A., M. Davis, S.J. Weinstein and P.H. Steen. “Transient behavior of the planar-flow melt spinning process.” ChemicalEngineering Science, 65.10 (2010): 3249—3259. Web. *
Oakes, J. M., S. Day, S.J. Weinstein and R.J. Robinson. “Flow field analysis in expanding healthy and emphyematous alveolar models using particle image velocimetry.” Journal of Biomechical Engineering, 132.2 (2010): 1-9. Web. *

Currently Teaching

CHME-301
Analytical Techniques for Chemical Engineering I
3 Credits
Mathematical and computational techniques necessary for engineering analysis are introduced that augment training from core mathematics and engineering courses. The spreadsheet environment is used to implement mathematical procedures and examine results. Topics covered include roots of equations, fitting equations to data, solution of systems of algebraic equations, interpolation, optimization, numerical differentiation and integration, and the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations. Techniques are applied to mathematical problems arising in chemical engineering using Microsoft Excel.
CHME-451
Analysis of MultiScale Processes
3 Credits
Heat transfer and diffusive transport in continuous media (solids, liquids, and gases) are examined over differential lengths. Heat and mass transfer coefficients used in engineering design are extracted from a precise description of local transport. Exact solutions of the differential equations governing fluid mechanics are examined under both steady state and transient conditions, and these analyses are used to determine forces on bodies and friction factors in pipe flows. The important interplay between differential and larger-scale analyses in engineering is emphasized.
CHME-499
Co-op
0 Credits
One semester of paid work experience in chemical engineering.
CHME-620
Transport Phenomena
3 Credits
Fundamentals of fluid flow are examined on a differential scale. Local differential equations governing fluid flow are derived from their corresponding integral forms using classical integral theorems. The form of these equations in various coordinate systems is examined. Exact solutions of differential equations are considered under both steady state and transient conditions, as are typical approximations to those equations such as creeping, potential, lubrication, and boundary layer flows. The theoretical basis of these approximations are unified via asymptotic theory. Forces on surfaces are determined by coupling differential velocity and pressure fields with appropriate integral representations.
CHME-777
Graduate Internship
3 Credits
This course is used by students as a qualifying capstone experience to their M.S. degree. Students must submit a 1-page proposal for the internship, to be approved by an employing supervisor and the Chemical Engineering department prior to enrolling. The work may involve research and/or design project with demonstration of acquired knowledge. The project scope should be developed with the intent of being completed in a single academic semester. In all instances, an evaluation report submitted to the employing supervisor of the work is required to satisfy the capstone experience.
MATH-790
Research & Thesis
0 - 9 Credits
Masters-level research by the candidate on an appropriate topic as arranged between the candidate and the research advisor.
MATH-791
Continuation of Thesis
0 Credits
Continuation of Thesis
MTSE-777
Graduate Project
1 - 4 Credits
This course is a capstone project using research facilities available inside or outside of RIT.

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Featured Work

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3D Models of Math Equations

Nate Barlow and Steve Weinstein

Assistant Professor Nate Barlow and Professor Steve Weinstein made 3D-printed models of mathematical equations to illustrate wave systems and other fluid dynamics concepts as part of their research....

View More about 3D Models of Math Equations