Principal Investigator
Bhargav Rallabandi combines mathematical modeling and experiments to understand and design complex flowing systems. Bhargav received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2010 from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India. He received an MS (in 2012) and a PhD (in 2015) in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working on the fluid mechanics of oscillating bubbles. He then worked as postdoctoral researcher from 2015 to 2018 at Princeton University, studying fluid flows in elastic geometries. He joined UC Riverside in 2018, where he is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Current Members
Arash Kargar is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Riverside working on modeling suspension hydrodynamics in soft systems. He received his master’s degree in 2017 form University of Tehran where his research centered on analyzing the mechanical behavior of three types of bio-actuators, namely: hydrogel bilayers, functionally-graded hydrogel layers, and core and shell structures. He received his bachelor’s degree from Shiraz University in 2015. He also has two years of work experience (from 2017-2019) in Pars Generator R&D center where he focused on the structural design and analysis of in-wheel electrical motors.
Xirui Zhang is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Riverside. He obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Dalian Jiatong University. He is currently working on inertial flows in microfluidic channels.
Xiaokang Zhang is currently a PhD student at University of California, Riverside. His research focuses on the dynamics of oscillating particles in fluids. Before joining UCR, he received the master degree from UCSD and bachelor degree in Beijing Forestry University. Besides research, he is a Formula One racing fan, hiker and endurance runner.
Jake Minten is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering. He currently works on theory and numerical simulations of fluid flows around interacting particulate suspensions.
Fardad Haratian is an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering. He is currently working on fabrication methods for microfluidics. When not in the lab, Fardad enjoys reading and playing video games.
Hannah Fuertez is an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering. She is currently working on experiments to understand the behavior of soft materials in flow.
Alumni
Adewale Oluwatimehin (MS, now at NAVSEA)
Najeeb Gohil (UG, now graduate student at USC)
Andrew Obermiller (UG, now graduate student at USCD)
Bryan Shaddy (UG, now graduate student at USC)
Aliasgar Badani (UG, now at Northrop Grumman)