Meet Isaac Jackiw: Curiosity, creativity, and the complex world of sprays

Isaac Jackiw's work on sprays, relevant across various sectors from agriculture to energy, contributes to the Faculty of Engineering's objectives in addressing global challenges.

In his role as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Isaac Jackiw investigates how complex fluids move, break apart and disperse — especially in the form of sprays. These systems have wide-ranging implications across sectors like energy, food processing and environmental technology. Jackiw’s research occupies the intersection of these practical and fundamental challenges.

A firm believer in learning as a lifelong pursuit, Jackiw sees research as a creative process — a way to ask better questions and to engage others in the search for understanding. It’s an approach he brings to both his lab and his classroom, with the goal of helping students build the skills and habits of thought that support curiosity and critical inquiry.

Meet Isaac Jackiw.

Tell us about your current role and the work you are involved in.

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering. My research focus is on multiphase fluid-dynamics; within that field, my specialty is anything related to sprays, especially sprays of complex fluids (or, “sprays with stuff in them”).

What led you to pursue a career in your field?

Two things I’ve always been passionate about are learning about fundamental sciences, especially understanding things that I see every day, and environmental sustainability, especially in the efficient use of resources. When you zoom into a spray, you find all kinds of physics that we know surprisingly little about; at the same time, they are used in just about everything and frequently contribute to a huge amount of waste. So, it’s this very nice area where you can get into some real nitty gritty physics stuff but still have a very wide-ranging impact!

Was there a particular moment or influence that sparked your interest?

During my master’s degree, I took a heat transfer course with a notorious take-home final exam. Without getting into the details, one of the questions was a very open-ended, “figure out and explain why this thing happens” type of question. In answering it, I started to learn about boiling and phase change, which ultimately led to an interest in multiphase flows. That question was really the turning point of when I started to love research, and I was fortunate to have some great mentors who encouraged and supported me to dive deep on that topic, even if it wasn’t necessarily related to my work at the time.

How does your work or research contribute to the high-level goals of your department or unit?

Sprays really are everywhere — from rain and breaking waves to agricultural irrigation and food processing. This research contributes to the Faculty of Engineering’s goals of solving the world’s greatest challenges across various sectors, including energy, mineral processing, climate and the environment to build a better future.

What do you find most rewarding about your job?

That I get to keep learning. It’s not always every day or every week, but I’m very fortunate to have landed a job where my principal directive is to keep learning and to help others learn.

What skills or experiences have been most valuable to you in your work?

I believe that at its core, research is a creative process. Creativity is important to synthesizing a novel research question, to finding a new approach to answering it, and to finding the right way to explain it.

How do you stay current with advancements and new trends in your field?

A lot of reading, a lot of talking and a lot of listening! I do my best to stay on top of the relevant publications out of the top journals in my field and to attend and participate in conferences, especially where international researchers attend. It helps that it’s a relatively small field and not hugely competitive, so the major players generally all know of one another and are quite collaborative.

What is one thing that people would be surprised to know about you?

I very nearly didn’t go into engineering, or even university! Out of high school, I seriously considered not going to university at all to pursue a career in music and guitar building. Luckily, I had a few really good (and honest!) mentors who gently nudged me in the direction of at least trying engineering; I like to think that it worked out!