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L. Mahadevan
- Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics
Core Member, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
Contact Information
| Office: | Pierce Hall 324 |
| Email: | lm [ AT ] seas [ DOT ] harvard [ DOT ] edu |
| Office Phone: | (617) 496-9599 |
| Office Fax: | (617) 495-9837 |
| Lab Name: | The Applied Math Lab |
| Lab Room: | 60 Oxford St. 328 |
| Lab Phone: | (617) 496-8892 |
| Assistant: | Marina DiDonato-McLaughlin |
| Office: | Pierce Hall 328A |
| Email: | marina [ AT ] seas [ DOT ] harvard [ DOT ] edu |
| Office Phone: | (617) 495-1508 |
| Office Fax: | (617) 495-9837 |
Education
- B. Tech., 1986 Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
- M.S., 1987, Engineering Mechanics, University of Texas at Austin
- M.S., 1992, Mathematics, Stanford University
- Ph.D., 1995, Applied Mathematics, Stanford University
Research Areas
- Applied Mathematics: Mathematical Biology
- Applied Mathematics: Mathematical Geophysics
- Applied Mathematics: Physical and Engineering Mathematics
- Applied Physics: Biophysics
- Applied Physics: Materials Science
- Applied Physics: Soft Condensed Matter
- Applied Physics: Surface and Interface Science
- Applied Physics: Theory and Simulation
- Bioengineering: Biomechanics
- Bioengineering: Cell and Tissue Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering: Fluid Dynamics
- Mechanical Engineering: Solid Mechanics
Research Profile
L. Mahadevan studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology-Chennai before turning to applied mathematics and mechanics at Stanford University, where he obtained his PhD. Prior to joining Harvard University in the fall of 2003, he was the inaugural holder of the Schlumberger Chair in Complex Physical Systems in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, and simultaneously a Professorial Fellow at Trinity College.
He started his independent career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught and held positions around the world including stints at Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris and the University of Chile, Santiago, and is currently also the Schlumberger Visiting Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University.
His work centers around using mathematics to understand the behavior of living and nonliving matter, particularly at the scale of the everyday world and is thus closely tied in with experience and experiments. A particular joy is to try and uncover explanations of robust everyday phenomena that are easy to observe, often not so well understood, and are of relevance far beyond what might be first envisaged.
Awards and named lectures include the Chaire Paris Sciences at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, Paris (2001), the Chaire Condorcet at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris (2001), the G I Taylor Lectureship of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (2001), the Alan Tayler Lectureship at Oxford University (2003), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2006), and a Visiting Miller Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley (2007).