I  am an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering (Division of Engineering and Applied Science) and Geophysics (Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences) at Caltech.  My research interests include earthquake engineering, computational mechanics, structural dynamics, and computational seismology.  My research group is currently working on various aspects of end-to-end simulations of earthquakes and building response using high-performance computing.

 

Current and Former Collaborators:

Prof. James L. Beck, Caltech

Prof. John F. Hall, Caltech

Prof. Thomas H. Heaton, Caltech

Prof. Chen Ji, University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. Monica Kohler, UCLA/Caltech

Prof. Dimitri Komatitsch, University of Pau, France

Prof. Judith Mitrani-Reiser, Johns Hopkins University

Prof. Keith Porter, University of Colorado, Boulder

Dr. Marco Stupazzini, Technical University of Milan

Prof. Jeroen Tromp, Princeton University

 

Software links:

SPECFEM3D:  A parallel program executable on a computer cluster, based on the Spectral Element Method. It can simulate an earthquake and model the propagation of seismic waves through the earth structure to distant locations and compute the ground motion time-histories at user-defined stations.

FRAME3D:  A nonlinear structural analysis program for damage analysis of buildings.

More about me:

I got my Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Caltech under the guidance of Dr. John F. Hall (Dean of students, Professor of Civil Engineering) who is an expert in computational mechanics and earthquake engineering.  My Ph.D. Thesis was on the behavior of tall buildings during strong earthquakes from nearby sources.  I  developed a three-dimensional nonlinear dynamic structural analysis program, FRAME3D, for this study.  I continue to upgrade the program at this time.  You can find detailed information about the program along with references at the following web-site: http://www.frame3d.caltech.edu. I have a Bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (Senior thesis advisor: Dr. V. Kalyanaraman (Professor and Dean IC & SR, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India)) and a Master's degree from Rice University (Thesis advisor: Dr. Joel P. Conte Professor, University of California, San Diego))