Arun Yethiraj
Madison, WI| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award (Research) |
| Project Title: | Active Matter in Disordered Materials |
| Field of Study: | Chemistry |
| Home Institution: | University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI |
| Host Institution: | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Maharashtra |
| Grant Start Month: | August 2025 |
| Duration of Grant: | Four months |
Brief Bio:
Dr. Arun Yethiraj was born in India and received his BTech in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He received an MS from Louisiana State University, a PhD from North Carolina State University, working with Professor Carol Hall, and did postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois, working with Professor Kenneth Schweizer. He joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in 1993. His research interest is in the statistical mechanics of complex fluids, including polymers, surfactants, ionic liquids, and biopolymers.
His hobbies include tennis, guitar, and running.
“Active matter” refers to a class of systems that are composed of self-propelled entities that convert stored energy into directed motion. The goal of Dr. Yethiraj’s Fulbright-Nehru research is to obtain a fundamental understanding of active matter in complex environments. His research project at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is using computational studies with machine learning analyses to reproduce experimental studies on robotic and molecular systems in order to obtain a fundamental understanding of the effect of crowding and noise on active processes, thereby allowing for the elucidation of transport mechanisms in other systems.