NARSIMHAN SOFT MATTER RESEARCH GROUP
Purdue Chemical Engineering
(765) 494-4281 (OFFICE)
WELCOME TO THE NARSIMHAN SOFT MATTER RESEARCH GROUP!
The Narsimhan research lab uses a combination of theory, simulation, and experiments to examine various problems in fluid mechanics and polymer physics at the meso to continuum length scale. Some applications include blood flow, vesicle dynamics, DNA polymer physics, suspensions, microfluidics, and interfacial rheology. Come and visit to learn more!
NEWS
MAY 2023
We are excited to have Aman join the lab for his masters capstone project this summer. Welcome, Aman!
MARCH 2023
Natasha successfully defended her PhD thesis and Anirudh passed his preliminary exam. Congratulations to Dr. Singh and Anirudh!
JAN 2023
Woohoo! We have a new grad student. Welcome, Tanvi!
JUNE 2022
Dr. Shiyan Wang and Dr. Vishal Anand complete their research stints at the group! Shiyan is heading to Discover Financial Services and Vishal is heading to Corning Inc. We wish them the best of luck!
JUNE 2022
Cheng-Wei successfully defended his PhD thesis! He will now head to Intel as a software engineer!
JAN 2022
Woohoo! We have new grad students in the group! Welcome, Isaac and George!
JAN 2022
Charlie successfully defended his PhD thesis! Congratulations, Dr. Lin.
NOV 2021
OCT 2021
Congratulations to Anirudh for passing his qualifying exam!
OCT 2021
Professor Vivek Narsimhan is named the Michael and Carolyn Ott Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering. Congratulations, Vivek!
OCT 2021
The Narsimhan Soft Matter Group presents at the Society of Rheology Annual Meeting, Maine. (link)
MAY 2021
Congratulations to Natasha for successfully passing her prelim exams!
NOV 2020
Narsimhan group attends virtual conferences for AIChE and APS/DFD. Five students and Prof. Narsimhan gave talks across both conferences. Videos are in the media tab!
NOV 2020
Article published in Food Hydrocolloids. This work, in collaboration with Prof. Ganesan Narsimhan at Purdue, illustrates a methodology to predict the granule size distribution and storage modulus (G’) during the initial stages of heating, for any starch variety and temperature profile. This work has received press from Phys.org, Mathesia, Purdue Research, and Hoosier Times.
NOV 2020
Physics of Fluids article chosen as Editor’s Pick for the special issue “Contributions from Early Career Researchers 2020”. This issue highlights up and coming postdoctoral researchers in fluid mechanics. Congratulations, Shiyan Wang!
OCT 2020
Vishal Anand joins lab as a new postdoc! Vishal is from Prof. Ivan Christov’s lab at Purdue. He will investigate motion of particulates in viscoelastic fluids, and look at solid-fluid interactions of membranes.
SEPT 2020
Invited article published in AIChE Journal for “Futures 2020” Issue, which highlights research by young chemical engineering investigators in transport phenomena.
SEPT 2020
Prof. Narsimhan gives the virtual department seminar at University of Houston’s Chemical Engineering Department. We thank Prof. Jeremy Palmer for graciously inviting Prof. Narsimhan
SEPT 2020
Prof. Narsimhan named Michael Ott Assistant Professor. This named professorship was generously supported by Michael Ott from Polysciences. We are grateful for your generous support!
SEPT 2020
Prof. Narsimhan awarded ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator Grant for 2020. This generous support will be used to study particulate motion in viscoelastic fluids for oil and gas applications.
JULY 2020
Article published in Journal of Chemical Physics. This research, in collaboration with Prof. Doraiswami Ramkrishna at Purdue, examines a new methodology to sample constrained, continuous random walks. We apply this methodology for sampling ideal polymer chains in an external field.
JUNE 2020
Article published in Physical Review Fluids. We develop theories to describe how interfacial rheology alters the breakup of droplets in shear and extensional flows. Interfacial shear viscosity increases its critical capillary number compared to a clean droplet, while interfacial dilational viscosity has the opposite effect.
APRIL 2020
Kyu Yoon joins group as a new postdoc! Kyu is working with Prof. Narsimhan and Prof. Alina Alexeenko at Purdue to examine heat and mass transfer during the secondary drying stages of lyophilization (freeze drying) for pharmaceutical applications.
FEB 2020
Prof. Narsimhan gives an invited department seminar at the University of Illinois Chicago Chemical Engineering Department and an invited talk at Northwestern in Soft Materials Seminar Series. We thank Prof. Vivek Sharma and Prof. Jeffrey Richards for these invitations.
JAN 2020
Article published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics. We develop a theory that can describe the motion of arbitrary shaped particles in weakly viscoelastic fluids under quadratic flow fields. We use this theory to demonstrate why ellipsoidal particles migrate to the center of a channel under flow at slower speeds compared to spheres of the same volume.
JAN 2020
Prof. Narsimhan highlighted in Purdue Exponent for outstanding teaching during Fall 2019 semester.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM PAST YEARS
ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN ACS MACRO LETTERS
NARSIMHAN LAB OFFICIALLY OPENS
Nov 2017
We examine the motion of knotted polymers under stretching and relaxation. We find that self-entanglements hasten the relaxation of polymer chains by decreasing the polymer's drag and increasing its entropic elasticity. Knots can also give rise to a wider range of polymer molecular configurations -- a phenomenon known as molecular individualism.
Aug 14, 2017
Vivek starts at Purdue University's Department of Chemical Engineering. There are several positions open for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs. If interested, please send CV to vnarsim@purdue.edu.