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"The Radke lab: where oil and water meet" is the proclamation on his website, and chemical engineering professor Clayton Radke has indeed spent his career studying the properties of the molecular interface between fluid phases. His research has evolved over the years, from adsorption from dilute liquids to recovery of underground oil with foam. He has studied numerous aspects of colloidal systems, which are states with high surface area such as very fine particles suspended in a solution. He currently is working on the interface between hydrogels and water to improve contact lenses and understand biomedical surfaces.

Radke has had a joint appointment in the Vision Science group since 2003. "It's fascinating to take quantitative engineering science into the medical community," he observed. "In the lab, where conditions can be controlled, if an experimental variable is changed then any difference in the outcome is due to the changed variable. Clinical trials on human subjects are much more subjective. Engineering scientists perceive nature through the eyes of fundamental physical laws, whereas clinicians perceive nature through the statistical response of human subjects. Bridging these two views of reality is a fascinating challenge."

One clinical trial Radke is participating in involves coating standard contact lenses with a tear film additive, which is determined to have a high wettability in the lab, and seeing if this remains true once on the eye. "We do hear that it provides 'increased comfort,' but this response is such a subjective measurement. It is difficult to get hard results from people's perceptions," he said.

Radke's research has been recognized with such awards as the 2003 ACS Award in Colloid Chemistry. He relishes the close collaborations he has formed with many colleagues. In the past year alone, he has published papers jointly with Nitash Balsara, Harvey Blanch, Susan Muller, John Newman, John Prausnitz, Meng Lin (Vision Science), Ken Polse (Vision Science), and Gerry Fuller (Stanford). When asked about his inspiration, Radke noted, "I am motivated by the quality of work done by my colleagues. They and my students teach me how to pick good problems and find new fields to expand into. I watched Charlie Wilke go from working in mass transport to becoming an expert in biochemical engineering. And this was back when computational resources were just coming out—he also had to teach himself all about computers. That is the sort of inspiring work that my colleagues are capable of."

He has spent much of his academic life on the West Coast, receiving his bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering in 1966 from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then migrated south to Berkeley to work with chemical engineering professor John Prausnitz, receiving his Ph.D. in 1971.

Radke is an outstanding teacher, say his students, and he has been justly recognized for this skill, winning both the college's Teaching Award and the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1993. In 1994, he received this campus's highest honor for teaching: the Distinguished Teaching Award. His enthusiasm and affection for his students is apparent in the way he reminisces with delight about a particularly successful cohort of students.

Noted a former student, "Not only is he a really nice guy, Radke also wants his students to learn and to think critically about the field, widening our perspective."

His colleagues agree. "Clay is totally serious and sternly dedicated to his work with the highest uncompromising standards, while on the other hand, grinning with mischief, warmly human, always helpful and supportive," noted Prausnitz about his former graduate student.

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Radke is surprisingly reticent about his own abilities as a teacher. Instead, he explains his teaching abilities by referring again to his colleagues. "The department has always had excellent teachers, and my colleagues are certainly examples of that. I think that I just do what is expected of me. I stay prepared and organized, making sure that the lectures are coherent and fit in with each other."

He does volunteer that he has an unconventional teaching philosophy, which is to teach students how to think broadly about their studies rather than only to teach the material. "I don't lecture from textbooks at all," Radke said. "I tell the students that the exams are open-book and open-notes, but that the reference materials won't help. My goal is to give them a flavor of what their careers will be like. The students know equations but they need to know how to think through a problem, since that's what they'll be expected to do once they embark on their careers."

Sweeping his hands through the air, he said thoughtfully, "Sometimes my evaluations say that the class is a bit too hard and fast- paced, and that makes me happy. That means that I am doing my job and helping my students to stretch their abilities."

"He's a remarkable fellow," remarked Prausnitz. "When he insists on high standards, Clay does not criticize with a harsh reprimand but, instead, he gently suggests that a scholar's reach should be higher than his grasp. His teaching and mentoring style is like that of a rooster who shows an ostrich egg to the hen, saying. "I am not making any demands. I am only showing you what is possible."

"Additionally, it would be impossible for me, or for anyone else, to talk about Clay without mentioning his infectious and pervasive humor, his pronounced, inimitable and irrepressible laughter," continued Prausnitz. "No one can laugh like Clay; this is his outstanding quality. When Clay laughs, the walls of Gilman Hall shake."

Radke explained his joy about life at Berkeley: "It's a great place to be. There's electricity in the air here, an excitement about academics."

Before joining the faculty here, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in England and was a faculty member at Penn State for three years. "I never expected to come back to Berkeley as a faculty member; we have a policy of both not hiring our own and not admitting our undergraduates into our graduate program. This rule is in place to encourage intellectual stimulation, but I had been working and teaching elsewhere for five years and my area of expertise was one that the department was looking for. And I was thrilled to come back because of the high caliber of the students and my peers."

"Students ask me all the time how to pick a career. For me it happened naturally. I liked math, I liked chemistry, and a high school teacher noted that there was a field that combined the two. I liked it so much that I went to graduate school because I didn't want to stop," he said with a broad smile. "And I never have."

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