A S Vandana

"We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size."

                                                                                                                                            - Quote attributed to Bernard of Chartres

Explorations in science 

We are surrounded by a myriad of solids, some crystalline, some amorphous. It is indeed fascinating if we wonder why they behave the way they do. My PhD was all about understanding the amazing spectrum of the startling behavior of ductile metals when they are slid past a tool at the scale of a few 100 microns to a few mm (mesoscale). The question of why the metals behaved the way they did owes to their polycrystalline nature - which is quite expected, considering the interaction scale. I am presently embarking on a journey to understand amorphous solids and maybe rediscover both amorphous and crystalline solids in a new light!

Bio

A human being in awe with the beautiful things around - humanity in people, the astounding patterns and imagery of nature, art, travel, adventure, inter alia. Let me also introduce myself in the usual way we follow:

I am a postdoctoral research fellow at TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Hyderabad with Prof. Smarajit Karmakar (and late Prof. Surajit Sengupta). My research interests broadly encompass computational solid mechanics and large-strain plasticity. I hold a PhD in the field of computational mechanics under the guidance of Prof. Narayan K. Sundaram from the Department of Civil Engineering, IISc. My thesis title is 'Simulation of complex plastic flows in metal sliding and cutting'.