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Join us
Students interested in being part of CoPhe lab are encouraged to write to me with your CV, stating your specific interests.
Applied mechanics and biomedical engineering
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You can directly apply to the department I am formally a part of.
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Our department AMBE, in short, is the most interdisciplinary deparment in the institute consisting of faculty from over a dozen different undergraduate streams.
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You have to make sure to apply to the fluid mechanics division of which I am associated with. Please check the syllabus for the interview.
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If you are trained in or comfortable with either solid mechanics or biomedical engineering syllabi, you can apply for the other disciplines too.
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However, in that case, you will be eligible to work only on collaborative projects that I co-advise with faculty from those respective divisions.
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School of interdisciplinary studies
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The Centre for complex systems and dynamics hosted within the School of Interdisciplinary Studies under the Computational Engineering vertical, invites applications for MS and PhD under the Interdisciplinary Research Project (IDRP) segment, which opens twice a year.
Projects for MS/PhD July 2026 batch
Male infertility research
Open position:
MS/PhD
Searching for the Egg: The Physics of Sperm Navigation
How does a single microscopic cell navigate a complex and dynamic environment to find the egg? Sperm cells are known to respond to chemical gradients (chemotaxis), temperature gradients (thermotaxis), and fluid-flow cues (rheotaxis), steering themselves through asymmetric flagellar beating. But how do these asymmetries emerge, and how does the flow generated by the beating tail itself alter the information available in the surrounding gradients? A key goal is to link navigational performance with intrinsic tail-beat characteristics measurable from microscopy videos, potentially uncovering clinically relevant signatures of fertility and motility. The problem lies at the intersection of fluid dynamics, biological physics, and nonlinear dynamics, offering opportunities for theory, computation, and experiments on one of nature’s most fascinating navigation problems.
In collaboration with,
Where to apply?
Fluid mechanics (AMBE), Computational Engg (IDRP, SIDIS, CE)
Who can apply?
Mechanical, Chemical
Physics, Computational Biology
Engineering:
Sciences:
Microswimmer Dynamics, Transport Phenomena,
Biophysical Fluid Mechanics, Multiphysics Modeling
Collective behaviour
Open position:
MS/PhD
What are the equations that govern the spatially extended stochastic dynamics of schooling fish and what do they reveal?
Social organisms show extraordinary group level behaviour that arises solely as a result of the behavioural interactions between the organisms. This ranges from flocking, where organisms achieve a consensus in the direction of motion, cohesion where organisms learn to stay together, collective transport where organisms cooperate to move heavy objects through stochastic terrains, and so on. Our interest lies in uncovering the principles that govern the dynamics of these collectives.
In collaboration with,
Vishwesha Guttal (CES, IISc)
Where to apply?
Fluid mechanics (AMBE), Computational Engg (IDRP, SIDIS, CSD)
Who can apply?
Mechanical, Chemical
Physics, Computational Biology
Engineering:
Sciences:
data-driven methods, flocking, stochastic dynamics, computational ethology
Pedestrian and traffic dynamics
Open position:
MS/PhD
How should autonomous vehicles move to navigate the chaotic vehicular flow in the Indian traffic scenario?
Indian traffic is a fasinating system to study the dynamics of nonlinear collective systems. The peculiarities of Indian traffic that include the high levels of heterogeneity in the flow, complex decision making in the absence of any lanes and non-adherence to traffic rules, makes studying these systems challenging. Without a clear understanding of the interactions between vehicles and how these interactions lead to the observed traffic behaviour, it is difficult to realise the dream of having self driving cars on Indian roads, where the autonomous vehicles have to navigate the stochastic complex collective of vehicles safely and efficiently.
In collaboration with,
Lelitha Devi V (Civil, Transportation)
Where to apply?
Fluid mechanics (AMBE), Computational Engg (IDRP, SIDIS, CSD), Civil (Transportation)
Who can apply?
Civil, Mechanical and other engineering branches
Physics
Engineering:
Sciences:
vehicle modelling, traffic congestions, car-following, decision models
Pedestrian and traffic dynamics
Open position:
MS/PhD
How do we prevent stampedes in dense crowds?
Stampedes are becoming increasingly very common in India, with the recent one being the political rally in Karur that resulted in the death of 41 individuals that included children. If we are able to model pedestrian behaviour in dense crowds, especially modelling the human-centric factors like long exposure, exhaustion, etc. which is likely to alter the interactions between pedestrians as a function of time, we could predict how the state of a dense crowd is likely to evolve. This will help in planning large events and dense religious gatherings and also understanding what optimal interventions can be done to prevent onset of stampedes.
In collaboration with,
Bhargava Rama Chilukuri (Civil, Transportation)
Where to apply?
Fluid mechanics (AMBE), Computational Engg (IDRP, SIDIS, CSD), Civil (Transportation)
Who can apply?
Civil, Mechanical and other engineering branches
Physics
Engineering:
Sciences:
pedestrian modelling, crowd dynamics, urban planning, stampede prevention
Bioinspired robotics
Open position:
MS/PhD
How do we program a swarm of robots to autonomously navigate stochastically changing heterogeneous environment?
Social organisms exhibit a variety of interesting and functionally relevant collective behaviour. Examples vary from a school of fish staying cohesive and polarized as they flee a predator, to a colony of ants that move very large objects to their nest through complex terrain. We aim to develop algorithms inspired from these behaviours to make a swarm of robots perform collective tasks, that is robust to failure of individual bots and stochastically changing environment, while only having partial knowledge of the entire system.
In collaboration with,
Ganga Prasath S (AMBE), FedEx Smart Center
Where to apply?
Computational Engg (IDRP, SIDIS, CSD), Fluid mechanics or Solid mechanics (AMBE)
Who can apply?
Engineering (with experience in AI and ML)
Physics (with datascience background)
Engineering:
Sciences:
swarm robotics, bio-inspired algorithms, autonomous robots
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