Biography
Philip Yecko is a physicist who studies fluids in nearly every form and place that fluids are found. Look around and you will see that our daily lives are awash with fluids, from the air we breathe, to the blood circulating in our bodies, to the petroleum which drives our energy and transportation industries. Confucius and Heraclitus recognized this over two thousand years ago, each declaring that everything flows. Leonardo DaVinci saw both the beauty and practical value of fluids and Dom Perignon turned one type of bubbly fluid into an icon of our culture.
Yecko's research brings together theory, experiment and computing to understand fluid dynamical problems and discover new applications and properties of fluids. His current work has been motivated by outstanding problems in magnetic drug targeting, contrast enhancement for medical MRI, umbilical cord flow, transport in unsteady flows and robotic monitoring in oceans. He is a regular participant in the GFD Summer Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. His research lab, the Complex Fluids Physics & Engineering (CoFPhE) lab is room 609 in NAB.
Before joining Cooper Union, Yecko taught a wide range of courses in physics and mathematics at Montclair State, Columbia University, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and at M.I.T. He believes that teaching is about effective communication and likes to draw on examples from many disciplines when teaching any subject. At Cooper, Phil teaches Physics Lab Ph291 (Fall), Modern Physics Ph214 (Spring) and elective courses in fluids and physics.
S.B. Physics, M.I.T. 1988 & Ph.D. Astronomy, Columbia University 1995