Members

Stoffel Janssens

I’m Belgian and I obtained a Master in Physical Chemistry at the Free University of Brussels. Later I obtained a PhD in Physics at Hasselt University in Belgium where I also did a two year postdoc. During my PhD and first postdoc I specialized in diamond growth, device fabrication and electronic measurements. After obtaining a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) fellowship I worked two years as a postdoc in the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba where I more deeply investigated diamond growth. In November 2015 I started working in the Fried Unit. Since then, I set up a lab to grow and investigate thin polycrystalline diamond films. In parallel, I worked on Marangoni propulsion and on non-coalescent droplets that hover on liquid substrates. Currently, I'm fabricating arrays of through glass vias that are sealed with suspended diamond.

Vishesh Bhat

I am from Bengaluru, India where I completed my Ph D in Mathematics, with a broad focus in the area of differential geometry. I am interested in exploring geometric narratives that underlie the working of certain physical phenomena.  I am currently looking at ways to use differential geometric notions for the understanding and analysis of problems in mechanics.

Vikash Chaurasia

I completed my Undergraduate and Masters degree in Department of Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, India in 2012. Later, I received my PhD from University of Houston in August, 2018 on Variational Mechanics of Charged Curves. During my PhD, I also worked with Professor Fried at OIST as a special research student. My core interest lies in continuum mechanics, variational calculus and Hamiltonian dynamics. I am keenly interested in studying interesting biological phenomena from mathematical perspective.

Smriti

I completed my PhD from IIT Delhi, India, in 2020. During the PhD, I have worked on the application of Irving-Kirkwood-Noll procedure specific to nanorods from non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Also, in thermodynamic equilibrium, I have employed the derivatives of Helmholtz free energy to obtain the microscopic expressions of different continuum fields. I have also worked in collaboration with Prof. Paul Steinmann, FAU, Germany, on a direct theory to model the elastoplasticity within the framework of special cosserat rod theory. I joined the MMMU in July 2020 to work on the mechanics of unstretchable two dimensional materials. I am closely interested in the mathematical modeling of real life physical problems.

David Vazquez Cortes

I received my PhD in Applied Physics from the University of San Luis Potosi in Mexico, where I studied the self-assembly of semiconductor nanostructures in III-V systems, by molecular beam epitaxy technique, and its application to semiconductor devices.
I also have experience in the machining of high precision parts, by using the machines in the workshop.In general, I like to use machines. As a Research Technician in the Mathematics, Mechanics, and Materials Unit at OIST
, I have the opportunity to learn a very wide variety of exciting experimental techniques, and I am also supporting the researchers of the unit in the performance and set up of experiments.

Michael Grunwald

Ali Rahmani

I received my Master and Bachelor in chemical engineering from Sharif University of Technology and Isfahan University of Technology, respectively. By the end of my Master I found that transport phenomena and surface sciences are my main interests in science, so I decided to join MMMU to look at an interesting engineering problem from both theoretical and experimental viewpoints.

Akyl Shakir

I received my BSc degree in Mathematics from Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan in 2019. During my bachelor’s thesis, I’ve worked on the investigation of the solution of a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) problem, used to model the oscillations of a thin metallic plate in a capacitor by applying singularity analysis in complex time.
I joined MMMU in September 2020 and interested in studying mathematical modeling of fluid mechanics problems.

Geoffrey Acoba Garcia