Stone, the Donald R. Dixon ’69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, pursues questions of fluid motion across a wide array of systems and fields. His work, with a talented team of researchers, combines experiments, modeling, simulation and theory to examine a variety of fundamental and applied problems in engineering, physics and biology, and their intersections. In recent years, his research group has examined problems of fluid flow and transport phenomena that occur in biofilms, microfluidic devices and technologies, water treatment, and thin-film coatings, and, most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, Stone and colleagues studied how a virus may be transmitted by the respiratory jets from asymptomatic individuals during ordinary activities, including speech. Stone is also a noted educator. The recipient of the University President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Engineering School’s excellence in teaching award, each December he delivers a holiday science lecture for children and their parents in the Princeton community.

“It is an honor to welcome so many outstanding researchers from around the world into the Fellowship of the Royal Society,” Sir Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society, said in a statement announcing the new members. “Through their careers so far, these researchers have helped further our understanding of human disease, biodiversity loss and the origins of the universe. I am also pleased to see so many new Fellows working in areas likely to have a transformative impact on our society over this century, from new materials and energy technologies to synthetic biology and artificial intelligence.”

Stone received his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology and was the Vicky Joseph Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University before joining the Princeton faculty in 2009. Stone was the first recipient of the G. K. Batchelor Prize in Fluid Mechanics in 2008 and received the Fluid Dynamics Prize of the American Physical Society in 2016. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Royal Society fellowship was created in 1660. Its membership has included Newton, Darwin and Einstein.