Carl Meinhart

Carl Meinhart is a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). His research focuses on microfluidics, nanofluidics, and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), with applications in chemical sensing, biomedical detection, and transport phenomena at small scales. He is affiliated with the Moskovits research group in chemistry and collaborates with the Rothman Lab in Molecular and Cellular Biology at UCSB.

• Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS)
• NSF Early CAREER Award recipient

His lab develops experimental and numerical tools to study transport processes in microfluidic and nanofluidic systems. Research projects include SERS-based chemical sensors, dielectrophoretic control of nanoparticles, acoustofluidic particle manipulation, and temperature gradient devices for biological studies. His work spans interdisciplinary collaborations with institutions like the California NanoSystems Institute and the Institute for Energy Efficiency.

Scientific awards and honors highlight his contributions to fluid mechanics and microscale technologies. The lab's publications emphasize real-time detection of narcotics/explosives, biomedical analysis, and optimization of microfluidic devices through numerical modeling and experimental validation.