People

Madhusudhan Venkadesan

Madhu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and the Graduate Program in Physical and Engineering Biology at Yale. He studies the use of mechanical design to solve control problems, with applications in biomedical sciences, evolutionary biology and robotics.

Carolyn Eng

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Carolyn Eng received her PhD in 2014 from Harvard University where she explored the role of fascia, and in particular the human iliotibial band, in elastic energy storage and recovery during locomotion. Carolyn is broadly interested in the influence of elastic connective tissues on the energetics and mechanics of movement. She received a NIH Ruth Kirchstein National Research Service Award postdocotoral fellowship to study the role of the aponeurosis in muscle shape change and gearing with Thomas Roberts at Brown University. At Yale, her research is focused on the interaction between skeletal elements and connective tissue structures to influence human foot stiffness and how muscle fiber orientation in the heart influences shape change during the cardiac cycle.

Neelima Sharma

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Neelima is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Yale. She earned her B.E. (2011) in Biotechnology from Delhi University. Her research work combines simulation and experiments. She has studied human hands and their stability during contacts, and her current project focuses on the functional morphology of animal joints.

Ali Yawar

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Ali is a PhD candidate in MEMS at Yale. He received his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee in 2014. His bachelor’s thesis was on the design of muscle-like actuators. He is interested in bio-inspired mechanisms, morphology based control systems, and passive dynamic machines. He has worked on human throwing at NCBS, India, humanoid locomotion at TUHH, Germany, human arm kinematics and robotic simulation at EPFL, Switzerland, and soap film dynamics at OIST, Japan.

Khoi Nguyen

Khoi Nguyen started his PhD training in 2016 and in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Sciences at Yale. He has previously worked on problems involving the mechanics of floating cereal pieces, and of evaporating coffee droplets. His current research is of the stiffening mechanism of fish fins and its applications to robotic design. Khoi received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University (2014) and his M.S. in the same field from Carnegie Mellon University (2015).

Nihav Dhawale

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Nihav Dhawale is graduate student at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India and a visiting assistant in research in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Sciences at Yale. He started his PhD in 2011 under Venkadesan, working on the energetics and stability of human running locomotion. His work involves conducting human subject experiments in conjunction with building simple mathematical models to ascertain how stability of running is achieved. Prior to this, he completed an M.Sc. in Physics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2010 and and a B.Sc. in Physics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai in 2008.