The School of Engineering at Brown University announces the hiring of Alp Sunol, postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University, as Assistant Professor of Engineering beginning January 1, 2027. Sunol will begin this fall as an adjunct faculty member before moving into the tenure-track position in the second semester of the academic year.
Sunol’s research develops computational and theoretical tools – combining large-scale simulation, automatic differentiation, and physics-informed machine learning – to understand and predict the behavior of soft materials, complex fluids, and biological systems across scales. At Harvard, he has worked with Prof. Michael P. Brenner in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He completed his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Stanford University under the supervision of Prof. Roseanna N. Zia as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and Stanford Graduate Fellow. He obtained his B.S. in chemical engineering from Caltech, where he completed his senior thesis with Prof. John H. Seinfeld.
Recently, his research has been recognized with the First Place Speaker Award at the Society of Rheology’s Future of Rheology Symposium and his selection as a finalist for the Victor K. LaMer Award, for which he was named a LaMer Keynote Speaker at the ACS Colloid & Surface Science Symposium.
The hire of Sunol continues the growth of the School in strategic areas of research and innovation.
“Professor Sunol’s work in understanding the complex mechanics of soft materials and transport phenomena aligns well with our school’s commitment to tackling challenges at the intersection of engineering, computation, physical science, and biology,” said Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering Tejal Desai.