Nhan Phan-Thien, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (born October 31, 1952, in AnGiang, Vietnam), is an emeritus professor of mechanical engineering at the National University of Singapore, Singapore.^[1] He has been an associate editor of Physics of Fluids since 2016, currently one of its Deputy Editors since 2023,^[2] and an editorial board member of Journal Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics.^[3] He held a Personal Chair at University of Sydney [1991-02] and head of the Mechanical Engineering Department National University of Singapore [2016–19]. His contribution to the rheology field includes the PPT (Phan-Thien – Tanner) model for viscoelastic fluid (1516 citations) and its variant (670 citations).^[4] He is the author and co-author of several books in rheology^[5]

Phan-Thien graduated from the University of Sydney, Sydney Australia, with a BEng (Mech. Eng. 1st Honours, University Medalist, 1975). He later completed a PhD degree at the University of Sydney, the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 1979.^[6]

He has been a faculty member in mechanical engineering at University of Newcastle (Australia) (1978–80) and at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (1980–02). At the University of Sydney, he held a personal chair (1991–02). He was a professor of mechanical engineering at the National University of Singapore, Singapore (2000–04, 2011–present). He was the founding chair in Bio-Engineering Division, which later becomes known as Biomedical Engineering Department at the National University of Singapore.^[7] He has held visiting professorships in Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, US, Caltech, California, US, and Stanford University, California, US, a Qiushi Chair Professor at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China,^[8] an adjunct professor at the University of Southern Queensland, Queensland, Australia,^[9] and an honorary professor at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.^[10]

Phan-Thien and his group have published extensively on the rheology of polymeric liquids, computational and constitutive modelling.^[11]

• Qiushi Chair Professor, Zhejiang University (2018–21);^[8]
• Fellow of the ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology (elected 2016);^[12]
• Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (elected 1999);^[13]
• Centenary Medal, awarded by the Governor General of Australia for services to Australian society and science in mechanical engineering (2001);^[14]
• Gordon Bell Prize, Price-Performance category, IEEE Computer Society (1997);^[15]
• Australian Society of Rheology Medal, awarded by the Australian Society of Rheology for distinguished contributions to Rheology (1997);^[16]
• Edgeworth David Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of New South Wales, for distinguished research in science amongst younger workers in Applied Mechanics (1982);^[17]
• Senior Fulbright Scholar (1982–83), California Institute of Technology, California, USA.^[18]

• Understanding Viscoelasticity: Basics of Rheology (Advanced Texts in Physics), ISBN 978-3540433958, Springer; 1st Edition 2002, 2nd Edition 2008,
• Understanding Viscoelasticity: An Introduction to Rheology (Graduate Texts in Physics), ISBN 978-3319619996, 3rd Edition with Nam Mai-Duy 2017, Springer,
• Understanding Viscoelasticity: An Introduction to Rheology (Graduate Texts in Physics), ISBN 978-3642329579, 2nd Edition 2013, Springer,
• Microstructures in Elastic Media: Principles and Computational Methods, ISBN 978-0195090864, 1st Edition with Sangtae Kim 1994, Oxford University Press,
• Numerical Study on Some Rheological Problems of Fibre Suspensions: Numerical Simulations of Fibre Suspensions, ISBN 978-3836476867, with Xijun Fan and Roger I. Tanner 2008, VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.