Vivek Narsimhan

Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering

Dr. Narsimhan obtained a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Caltech and a Master in Advanced Study in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. He earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Prior to joining Purdue University, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT.

Dr. Narsimhan's research uses a mixture of theory, simulations, and experiments to examine problems in the areas of suspensions, complex interfaces, fluid mechanics, and polymers. He has developed mathematical models, performed simulations, and conducted experiments to describe the mechanics of droplets, red blood cells, and vesicles under various flow types and microfluidic geometries. These investigations provide insight into how complex membranes alter the mechanical stability and motion of fluid-filled particles, both individually and as a suspension. Dr. Narsimhan has also simulated the jamming and translocation dynamics of knotted polymers. He has modeled the relaxation of knotted DNA that has been validated by single-molecule experiments. These studies have possible applications in next-generation DNA mapping/sequencing as well as providing insight into the dynamics of entanglements in polymer systems.