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Introduction 

Briefly, I am from Bangalore, born and brought up, and I have been quite passionate about science and technology from a very young age. My case is slightly different from my peers as I am challenged with hemiparesis due to Cerebral Palsy.  My personal experiences and the lack of precise understanding of many such neurological disorders in the field motivated me to consider a research career in neuroscience. One of my biggest dreams is to understand how our human brain functions, and precisely how it plans and executes movements. Through my research on the brain's motor circuits, I would like to contribute to society by improving the lives of people affected by disorders such as stroke, cerebral palsy, and Parkinson's disease. Currently, I am transitioning to a postdoctoral research scholar position at the University of Iowa and will be working with Prof. Sara Hussain on stroke rehabilitation. 

I received the Prime Minister's Research Fellowship from the Government of India for my doctoral research. I pursued my Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Motor Control Lab under the guidance of Prof. Aditya Murthy and Prof. Ashitava Ghosal at the Center for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Here, I worked on the underlying neural strategies regarding the control and coordination of human arm movements.  

I obtained my B.Tech. degree in Aerospace Engineering and M.Tech. degree in Applied Mechanics (Biomedical Engineering) at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. I was the recipient of the Dhirubhai Ambani Undergraduate Scholarship from Reliance Foundation for outstanding academic performance among physically challenged candidates in the higher secondary school examination. I conducted my master's research at the Neuromechanics lab headed by Prof. Varadhan SKM, where I investigated the lack of control in human finger movements, also known as kinematic finger enslavement, and the effect of wrist posture on this relationship.

You could find my research profile at -

1) Google Scholar Page 

2) Research Gate

3) Scopus Profile  

If you are interested in knowing more about my personal life, do check out my blog page. 

Selected Work

Articles

1. N. Chakrabhavi, V. SKM, A. Ghosal, A. Murthy, Signatures of rapid trajectory control during finger and arm movements. Exp Brain Res 244, 200 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-026-07396-6

2. N. Chakrabhavi, A. Ghosal, A. Murthy, Differential kinematic control and co-ordination among redundant joints during whole arm reaching movements. [Preprint] (2025). Available at: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.08.681178v1.

3. N. Chakrabhavi, V. Vasudevan, V. Skm, A. Ghosal, A. Murthy, Kinematic signatures of fast feedback trajectory control during goal-directed finger, arm, and saccadic eye movements. [Preprint] (2025). Available at: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.09.552575v3.

4. N. Chakrabhavi, V. Skm, Wrist Posture Does Not Influence Finger Interdependence. J Appl Biomech 35, 410–417 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1123/jab.2019-0010

5. D. Rachaveti, N. Chakrabhavi, V. Shankar, V. Skm, Thumbs up: movements made by the thumb are smoother and larger than fingers in finger-thumb opposition tasks. PeerJ 6, e5763 (2018). https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5763

Conferences

1. Niranjan Chakrabhavi, Puneet Singh, Abhishek Lenka, Albert Stezin, Ketan Jhunjhunwala, Pramod Kumar Pal, Ashitava Ghosal, Aditya Murthy, Trajectory control of goal directed reaching movements and its implications in Ataxia and Parkinson’s Disease. Neuroscience 2023, Society for Neuroscience, Washington DC, USA. (Poster) 

2. Niranjan Chakrabhavi, Varadhan SKM, Ashitava Ghosal, Aditya Murthy, A geometric approach to distinguish feedforward planning from feedback control. Neural Control of Movement 2022, Dublin, Ireland. (Poster)

3. Niranjan C S and Varadhan SKM, Interdependence of finger movements during flexion, extension and neutral position of the wrist. Neuroscience 2017, Society for Neuroscience, Washington DC, USA. (Poster)

4. Niranjan C S, Vaisakh Shankar, Dhanush R, Varadhan SKM, Kinematic study of thumb touching phalanges. Indian National Conference on Applied Mechanics (INCAM) 2017, Allahabad, India. (Poster)

©  Niranjan Chakrabhavi