Team

Stylianos (Stelios) Varchanis
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering
Email: svarch@mit.edu

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About Stelios
Stelios is a chemical engineer intrigued by non-Newtonian fluid mechanics and rheology: the study of how fluid-like materials deform and flow. These fields have deep roots in chemical engineering and provide a powerful framework for understanding systems ranging from polymeric and particulate materials to biological fluids and living cells.

Stelios completed his undergraduate studies in Chemical Engineering at the University of Patras in Greece. He then served as a chemical engineer in the Army Aviation branch of the Hellenic Armed Forces. After completing his service, he returned to the University of Patras, where he earned an M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering and studied free-surface film flows over structured surfaces. He subsequently completed a Ph.D. in the same department, focusing on elastic instabilities and nonlinear dynamics in flows of complex fluids, alongside the development of constitutive models and computational methods.

Stelios then joined the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan as a postdoctoral scholar, where he studied viscoelastic flows in microconfined environments and developed continuum models for shear-banding colloidal suspensions and pastes. He later received a Flatiron Research Fellowship from the Simons Foundation and joined the Center for Computational Biology at the Flatiron Institute in New York, where he extended his work to cellular mechanics, investigating intracellular fluid–structure interactions during cell division and growth. In 2026, he joined the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, where he leads the Varchanis Research Group.

Outside the lab, Stelios is an avid traveler and a foodie. He enjoys exploring the world with family and friends, engaging with and learning from different cultures, and trying the local cuisine wherever he goes. He is also a roller-coaster enthusiast and never misses an opportunity to visit an amusement park in search of the next thrilling ride.

Tseganesh Gudeta
Room: E19-502
Tel: 617-324-3857
Email: tgudeta@mit.edu