Home | Nature-Inspired Fluids and Interfaces Lab

Observing nature to inform advances in science.

The Nature-Inspired Fluids & Interfaces Lab is led by Dr. Jonathan Boreyko. Inspired by nature's design for animals, plants, and the weather, our group's research involves characterizing unexplored phenomena and designing innovative materials and systems. Our research is a multi-disciplinary combination of fluids dynamics, heat transfer, interfacial phenomena, materials science, and renewable energy.

Lake image — This artwork represents our desire to draw inspiration from nature to develop novel technologies and systems.

NIFI Group, Fall 2023.
Prof. Boreyko and Prof. Kennedy harvesting water with their Fog Harp.
Group hike to the Cascades in 2024.
Jumping-droplet review paper in the journal Droplet.
Skiing the Matterhorn in Switzerland after the 2023 GRC on Phase-Change Phenomena.
Spore-laden droplet on a wheat leaf, featured on the front cover of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Photo of our 10-foot-tall synthetic tree, which can use surface tension to pull water against gravity.

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Latest News

10/6/20: Our paper on how Fog Harps operate in a heavy outdoor fog has been published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Congrats to Weiwei and team!

8/18/20: Congrats to Mojtaba, Kevin, and Ranit for their paper on bridging-droplet thermal diodes getting published in Advanced Functional Materials!

6/11/20: Prof. Boreyko has received tenure with promotion to associate professor. A big thanks to my mentors, Prof. Chuan-Hua Chen and Dr. Patrick Collier, collaborators, and all of my wonderful students who made this possible!

4/16/20: Read this new paper in Advanced Sustainable Systems to find out how Fog Harps can harvest water even in a light fog! Congrats to Weiwei, Thomas, Brandon, and Prof. Kennedy!

3/30/20: Congrats to Viverjita for defending her MS thesis! We will miss you but are excited about your future adventures in ecology.

3/24/20: Weiwei has successfully defended her PhD thesis! Thanks for all of your outstanding work on the Fog Harp and synthetic tree projects, NIFI will miss your bright presence in our group!

2/18/20: Congrats to Pranav, Tejas, and Andrew, for their paper in Langmuir on using evaporating droplets to characterize hygroscopic materials.

2/7/20: Congrats to Saurabh and Farzad, who captured the physics of inter-droplet ice bridging in their new Soft Matter paper.

1/15/20: Congrats to Kaavya for winning the MII Adhesive Manufacturing Scholarship for her research with NIFI!

1/14/20: Congrats to Weiwei and the senior project team of Richard, Collin, David, Ziad, and Daniel, whose paper in Scientific Reports shows how to build a tall and scalable synthetic tree.

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