Principal Investigator
Prof. Ashwin Ramachandran joined the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University as an Assistant Professor in 2025. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University working with Prof. Zemer Gitai and Prof. Howard Stone, where he studied how bacteria interact with their complex mechanical environments in the context of infections. Ashwin received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics & Astronautics with a Ph.D. minor in Bioengineering from Stanford University in 2021 working with Prof. Juan Santiago, where he developed microscale technologies for water desalination and disease diagnostics applications. He received his B. Tech in Aerospace Engineering with Minor degrees in Mathematics and Physics from IIT Bombay in 2015. He is a recipient of the President of India Gold Medal and Institute Silver Medal from IIT Bombay, the Stanford Bio-X Bowes Fellowship, and the CHEMINAS Young Researcher Poster Award.
Graduate Students
Raghav Ram
Raghav is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering, with research spanning microfluidics, biofluid mechanics, active matter physics, multiphase flows, computational fluid dynamics, and Langevin simulations. His current research is focused on the transport and preferential concentration of microswimmers in oscillatory flow environments.
Shubhonil Sarkar
Shubhonil is a PhD student in the Mechanical Engineering department. He completed his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering in 2025 from NIT Agartala, India. His research interests lie at the intersection of microfluidics and microbiology. His current research is focused on understanding bacterial growth kinetics under varied flow conditions and on demystifying transport phenomena in confined geometries. Born and raised in West Bengal, India, he enjoys cooking, listening to music, and photography in his leisure time.
Sazid Noor Rabi
Rabi is a PhD student at Purdue ME. His research interests currently focus on cellular mechanics and mechanobiology. He aims to understand and better elucidate the behavior of cells from different organisms, combining mechanics, biophysics, and biochemistry. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, listening to podcasts, and doing photography.
Luren Wang
Luren is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering. His research spans microfluidics, intermediate fluid mechanics, chemical characterization at small scale, and mechanobiology.