Rangarajan Radhakrishnan, a graduate student in the Dynamics of Complex Fluids group led by Prof. Patrick Underhill, received 3rd prize in the poster competition at the 84th Annual Meeting of the Society of Rheology held in Pasadena, CA in February 2013. The annual meeting showcases the research of its worldwide membership of rheologists who study flow behavior of different materials from foams to blood.
The poster competition is designed to recognize excellence in research among the students and postdocs who participate. Two of Prof. Underhill’s PhD students, Sandeep Chilukuri and Rangarajan Radhakrishnan, were selected among the 8 finalists in the competition.
Rangarajan won the award for his poster titled “Importance of solvent quality on the hysteresis in the coil-stretch transition of flexible polymers”. His poster presents a simple model to understand the impact of solvent-polymer interactions on the stretching of long polymers in flow. The results presented are relevant for applications such as turbulent drag reduction in pipes and manipulation of DNA in microfluidic devices.
Prof. Patrick Underhill, Rangarajan’s advisor, is funded by the National Science Foundation and won the prestigious CAREER award in 2010. Details of his research can be found at http://www.rpi.edu/~underp3