Research

I hold a PhD in Applied Mechanics from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India, with my thesis focussing on enhancing the power obtained from piezoelectric energy harvesters. Energy harvesters are small devices that can convert otherwise wasted energy, such as heat and vibrations in the environment, into a small amount of electricity. One could then use this electricity to power wireless sensors and small devices - for instance, a vibration energy harvester could use vibrations from a railway track to power sensors that monitor structural integrity of the tracks. I worked on how we could enhance the performance of vibration energy harvesters that use piezoelectric transduction to generate energy.

After completing my PhD, I moved to the UK to work on the development of a software package that enables bottom-up modelling of helicopters at the University of Bristol. I was part of a £3.5 million project involving multiple UK universities to develop new experimental and computational methods for the analysis of tiltrotor helicopters. My task was to develop a software framework that could allow designing of the individual components of the helicopter, and then automatically assembles them to simulate the motion of the entire helicopter. I developed a comprehensive software capable of simulating any mechanical system, not just a helicopter. However, there are some limitations - the software could handle only rigid systems. Researchers at Bristol continue to work on the software, adding more functionality, including the capability to model flexible systems, while I have moved to Birmingham since October 2021 in the pursuit of diversifying my knowledge.

Currently, I am a Research Fellow in Computational Neuroscience at the Center for Systems Modelling and Quantitative Biomedicine (SMQB) at the Univeristy of Birmingham, UK. I am investigating the effects of triggers such as stress, sleep deprivation and missed medication on the seizure propensity in patients with epilepsy. Clinical evidence point towards the fact that epileptic seizures are not random and are instead precipitated by triggers specific to each patient. Some of these triggers act instantaneously, for instance, flashing lights triggering seizures in patients with photosensitive epilepsy. Others take some time to manifest, for instance, stress or sleep deprivation. I am working on a way to translate this clinical evidence into mathematical models that could help forecast seizures and devise interventions to prevent a seizure.

My research is directly shaped by the ‘Perturbations in Epilepsy’ workshop that I co-organise along with my colleagues at the SMQB. Every year, we bring together a range of stakeholders to inform our research on epilepsy,

Patients and carers - to share their experiences on how epilepsy affects their lives and hear the factors that they think are affecting their seizures.
Clinicians - to share their expertise on different epilepsy syndromes and the mechnaisms by which they are affected by various seizure triggers.
Academics - to help with mathematical modelling, and data collection, analysis and interpretation.
Industry partners - primarily from the health monitoring and diagnostics space to discuss the feasibility of long-term monitoring of factors such as heart rate variability, sleep duration and stress levels.

The first edition of the workshop took place in April 2022 and we are planning to organise the second in June 2023.

I am open to new collaborations, and would like to particularly hear from graduate students - I have some interesting problems to work on!