People

Faculty

Madhusudhan Venkadesan

Madhu is an Associate Professor (term) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and the Graduate Program in Physical and Engineering Biology at Yale. He studies Biomechanics and Control, specifically the role of mechanical design to solve control problems, with applications in biomedical sciences, evolutionary biology and robotics.

Visiting Scientists and Affiliates

Erynn Johnson

Personal URL

Erynn is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Yale. She earned her PhD in Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania (2020) and her B.S. in the Science of Earth Systems at Cornell University (2015). Her research is focused on using experimental approaches to understand the evolution of mollusk shell strength over deep time.

Postdoctoral Associates

Nikolaos Papachatzis

Nikos is a postdoctoral associate in Yale’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. He earned his Ph.D. in 2022 from the Department of Biomechanics at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, mentored by Kota Takahashi. Currently, Nikos is developing mathematical and comparative experimental approaches to understand how mechanical forces have shaped the morphology of primates’ lower and upper extremities, including humans. He aims to incorporate scientific perspectives from different fields to understand why the human body moves and looks the way it does, translating biological principles into technological applications to lessen or prevent locomotion-related health issues.

Graduate Students

Dee Rivera

Dee Rivera is a graduate student in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Yale. Previously, she developed a bio-inspired linear systems model of muscle contraction and implemented this model as a control system for a commercially available powered lower limb prosthesis. Her current research interests include the study of muscle as a material, mathematical biology, and the intersection of biological physics and human rehabilitation. Dee received an Associates in Applied Science from Coconino Community College (2016) and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Biology from Northern Arizona University (2020).

Johannes Sieberer

Johannes Sieberer is a graduate student in Yale’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Previously, he worked in medical device R&D to improve the delivery of electrical shocks to the human body in the treatment of cardiac arrests. His current research interests include improving the understanding of elbow and patellofemoral joint complications to develop better treatment methods with surgeons at Yale School of Medicine Orthopedics and Rehabilitation. Johannes received a Bachelor of Science in Mechatronics - Electrical Engineering (2018), Masters of Science in Engineering in Industrial Engineering & Management (2021), and Medical Technologies (2022) from the MCI in Innsbruck, Austria.

Collaborators and mentors

* Co-author on paper(s), grant(s), or both.

Lab alumni

Postdocs

  • Yue Guan - Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Memphis
  • Carolyn Eng - Research Project Manager, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute
  • Vandana Phadke - Senior Clinical Research Scientist, Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, New Delhi, India
  • Dhiraj Singh - Postdoctoral researcher, University of Utah.
  • Aisa Biria - Research Associate, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

Ph.D. students

Post-baccalaureate Researchers

  • Vir Shetty
  • Aparna Nair-Kanneganti - Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program
  • Akshay Srinivasan - Senior AI Engineer, SonyAI.
  • Surabhi Simha - Postdoctoral Fellow, Emory University

Masters students

  • Vishaal Krishnan - PhD student, University of California, San Diego

Undergraduate students

  • Yale: Dan Huynh, Eric Chan, Lucinda Peng (PhD at Georgia Tech), A. Michael West (PhD at MIT), Claire Huebner (Synectic Medical Product Development), Petter Wehlin (ARIX Technologies), Alexander Lee (UPenn), Lucia Korpas (PhD at UPenn), Katherine Li, Dante Archaengeli, Xuan Truc-Nguyen (PhD at UCSD), Jeffrey Gau (PhD at Georgia Tech), Robert Loweth (PhD at UMich, Ann Arbor), Daniel Pfaff (BS at Worcester Polytechnic), Sarah Weil, Bernardo Saravia, Henrik Hartmann, Daniel Pfaff, Betsy Li, Megan Perkins, Stephanie Silin.
  • NCBS: Kishan Kishan (PhD at NYU), Radha Nayak, Evan John Philip, Archishman Raju, Anirban Mukherjee, Harsha Vardhan Dasarathy, Prashanth Srinivasan, Aravinda Ramakrishnan, Prashanthi Ravi, Jennifer Chang, Sumanth Dathathri (PhD at Caltech).

(High) School students

  • Yale: Nick Monteiro
  • NCBS: Ranjini Narayanan