SFI - Structure Fluid Interaction

This is one of the hot topics in mechanics... lot of people are working on it and results have just started to come out. one of my friends has just finished his PhD in this area. SFI is a multi-physics problem. A specific problem often mentioned is, how to transfer energy from a structure to a fluid? For example, there is heat flow from a solid to a fluid, and if you want to understand the physics and model what is happening at the interface, you need to perform SFI analysis. The difficulty comes from highly non-linear, mostly empirical fluid theory with sometimes (elastic) mathematically well defined linear solids theory.
Watch out, this field is going to produce some good interdisciplinary work. Well, this last statement was based on the fact the solids and fluids people think they are seperate for various reasons even though both end up solving the same Navier's equation more or less. Infact, interdisciplinary is the key to the future.

My work is in the field of thin films (brittle), which is more than a decade old and isn't that interesting anymore looking at the attendence for these seminars at various conferences.