| Arezoo Motavalizadeh Ardekani | |
| Birth Place: | Iran |
| Workplaces: | Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Massachusetts Institute of Technology Purdue University |
| Alma Mater: | Sharif University of Technology University of California, Irvine |
| Thesis Title: | Particle interaction, deformation, and collision in viscous and viscoelastic fluids |
| Thesis Url: | https://worldcat.org/en/title/671261692 |
| Thesis Year: | 2009 |
Arezoo M. Ardekani is an Iranian-American physicist who is a professor at Purdue University. Her research considers the flow of complex fluids. She was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2020 and a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022.
Ardekani is from Iran. She was born in Isfahan, and was strongly recommended that she become a scientist as a child. She moved to Tehran for her undergraduate studies, where she earned a bachelor's degree at the Sharif University of Technology.[1] Ardekani moved to the University of California, Irvine for graduate research,[2] where she worked on particle interactions. She moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Shapiro Postdoctoral Fellow, where she worked with Gareth H. McKinley on bead formation in viscoelastic jets.
Ardekani started her independent career at the University of Notre Dame in 2011.[3] She moved to Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis in 2014, where she leads the Complex Flow Lab.[4] She investigates complex fluids and particle transport. She combines theoretical analyses with computational simulations to understand fluid flow.
Ardekani studied the microbes that accumulate at oil spills. She identified that microbes initially move due to chemotaxis (they are attracted to the chemical trail of a food source), but subsequently move due to the formation of a hydrodynamic phenomenon. Ardekani demonstrated that microbes are involved with environmental remediation.[5]