ICTS

Education

• BTech (1984) Chemical Engineering, IIT Delhi
• PhD (1994) Aerospace Engineering, IISc Bengaluru
• Postdoctoral Fellow (1994) Caltech (California Institute of Technology).

Employment

• 1998-1998: Scientist, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bengaluru.
• 1998-2012: Faculty member, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru.
• July 2012-Present: Professor in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, (at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Hyderabad till July 2016). Present: Senior Professor and Dean Academic, International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, TIFR Bengaluru.

Research

Our group has a long term interest in flow instabilities. We ask how gradients of density and viscosity, and thermodynamic effects brought about by phase change affect in a deep way the tendency of a laminar flow to go unstable.
We work on cloud fluid dynamics, and are trying to understand how vortex dynamics affects entrainment and droplet growth. We also work on mixing in the Bay of Bengal, and are beginning to model the Indian monsoon.
In collaboration with Narayanan Menon, we study the combined dynamics of deformable solids and fluids, such as plastic rods unbending on a liquid surface, and balls falling through viscous liquid onto a solid plate.

Selected Publications

• Early evolution of optimal perturbations in a viscosity-stratified channel. Ritabrata Thakur, Arjun Sharma & Rama Govindarajan, arXiv:2007.03628, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Special Volume in Celebration of the GK Batchelor Centenary, 2021, 914, A10, ​https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2020.1160
• Waves, Algebraic Growth and Clumping in Sedimenting Disk Arrays. Rahul Chajwa, Narayanan Menon, Sriram Ramaswamy & Rama Govindarajan, arXiv:2002.04168. Physical Review X, 10, 041016 2020, ​https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.10.041016   
• Chaotic Orbits of Tumbling Ellipsoids. Erich Essmann, Pei Shui, Stéphane Popinet, Stéphane Zaleski, Prashant Valluri and Rama Govindarajan, Journal of Fluid Mechanics. 903, A10, 2020. ​​​https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2020.595
• Mammatus cloud formation by settling and evaporation. S. Ravichandran, Eckart Meiburg and Rama Govindarajan. Journal of Fluid Mechanics. 899, A27, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2020.439
• Spatio-temporal relationships between rainfall and convective clouds during Indian monsoon through a discrete lens. Arjun Sharma, Adway Mitra, Vishal Vasan, Rama Govindarajan. International Journal of Climatology, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6812
• Accurate solution of the Maxey-Riley equation, and effects of Basset history, S Ganga Prasath, Vishal Vasan and Rama Govindarajan, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2019.194