About me

I am a post-doc with Prof. Sanjay Govindjee at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley and Dr. Frank McKenna at the NHERI SimCenter.

I obtained a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering at NITK Surathkal (India) in 2007; Masters in Aeronautics at Caltech in 2009 and a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering (working with Prof. Peter Wriggers) at the Institute of Continuum Mechanics, Germany in 2018. I was a Group leader (Nanomechanics and Nanotribology) between 2018 - 19 at the Institute of Continuum Mechanics, Germany before moving to the US in Jan 2020 to UC Berkeley. In Fall-2020, I was a lecturer for the course “Engineering Dynamics and Vibrations (CE126)” offered in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley.

My research interests are in the area of Computational Continuum Mechanics where I bring together numerical methods for solids and fluids to understand applications of mechanics. For more information check out, Academic CV / Google Scholar / ORCID iD / Github

Awards and honors

  • Scholarship from LUT research foundation (Finland) for research visit awarded twice (2017, 2019)
  • Best researcher in the area of mechanics at LUH, awarded by the Mechanics section of Leibniz Foundation (2017)
  • Viktor-Rizkallah Award for best International Researcher, awarded by Leibniz Foundation (2016)
  • Finalist at the 26th Robert J. Melosh Medal competition (2015)
  • Scholarship from Continental AG and Leibniz University Hannover towards Ph.D. (2011-15)
  • Best poster award at GACM colloquium in Hamburg, Germany (2013)
  • Russel R. Vought fellowship, California Institute of Technology (2007-08)
  • NTSE state scholarship, Government of Karnataka, India (2001)
  • Meritorious student award, Government of Karnataka, India (2001)

Startup and industrial consulting

  • Continental AG, Hannover, Germany (Feb - Dec 2019)
  • External technical consultant, JMTC Hamburg, Germany (Feb 2015 – Dec 2019)
  • CEO, CTO and co-Founder, Engineer Materials Inc Bengaluru, India (Jun 2017 – Dec 2019)
  • Freelance writer, SimScale GmbH Munich, Germany (Aug – Dec 2018)
  • CTO and co-Founder, SymboSim Inc Bengaluru, India (Jan – May 2017)
  • Technical writer, SimScale GmbH Munich, Germany (Jul 2016 – Jan 2017)
  • Software developer, Blueberry Technologies, Bengaluru, India (Jul 2009 – Dec 2010)

Grants

  • “Nano-scratching for characterization of nanostructured polymers” from Continental AG (Co-PI) (Feb - Dec 2019)
  • Funding to support travel of young researchers attending the RCM 2017 conference, International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (Mar 2017) (Co-PI)
  • Funding for organization of Conference-Workshop RCM 2017, Graduate Academy at Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany (Mar 2017) (Co-PI)

Reviewer

  • SMART Scholarship Program, Department of Defense (DoD), USA (Jan 2021)
  • International Journal of Numerical Methods in Engineering (2020 – Present)
  • Marine Technology Society Journal (2020 – Present)
  • International Journal of Advances in Engineering Sciences (2020 – Present)
  • International Journal of Applied Mechanics (2020 – Present)
  • Computational Mechanics (2020 – Present)
  • Multibody System Dynamics (2020 – Present)
  • International Journal of Solids and Structures (2018 – Present)
  • Journal of Elasticity (2017 – Present)
  • Proceedings for International Conference “Green Trends in Mechanical Engineering & Sciences,” Hassan, India (2018)
  • Proceedings for International workshop-conference “Research Challenges in Mechanics: Applications of Automated Computational Techniques,” Hannover, Germany (2017)
  • Handbook of Research on Computational Intelligence for Engineering, Science and Business, Editor: Siddhartha Bhattacharyya and Paramartha Dutta, IGI Global, USA (2011)

Conferences and mini-symposium organization

  • “Computational contact and interface mechanics,” GACM (2019)
  • “New challenges on computational contact mechanics and interface models,” ECCM (2018)
  • “Multibody system dynamics and nonlinear transient dynamics with FEM: Methods and applications,” ECCM (2018)
  • International workshop-conference on “Research challenges in mechanics: Applications of automated computational modeling (RCM 2017),” Hannover, Germany

Professional memberships

  • Life member, Caltech Alumni Association
  • Member, German Association of Computational Mechanics (2013 - 2019)
  • Student member, Southern California Earthquake Centre (2008 - 09)
  • Student member, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (2007 - 09)
  • President, Indischer Verein Hannover & Indian Academic Society of Hannover (2013)
  • Developer and web administrator, Project Indian Students in Germany of Indian Embassy in Berlin (2015-17)