Manish Kumar

My research employs theoretical, computational, and data-driven approaches to investigate the dynamics of complex fluids and soft matter relevant to energy, biomedical, and environmental applications. My postdoctoral research has been focused on turbulence in complex fluids and different aspects of data-driven methods. I have pioneered different variants of Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) to investigate turbulence in complex fluids and solved a half-century-old mystery regarding the dynamics of the Maximum Drag Reduction state by leveraging them. Additionally, I have developed data-driven frameworks for reduced-order modeling of complex dynamics in complex fluids and for accessing physical parameters challenging to measure experimentally.

My doctoral research focused on viscoelastic flows through porous media, where I investigated pore-scale viscoelastic instabilities and their effects on the sample-scale transport of fluids and particles in porous media. I also developed a unique framework based on the Lagrangian stretching to extract the polymer stress field from velocity measurements, which addresses a long-standing problem regarding the experimental access of polymeric stress field. Another aspect of my doctoral research focused on flagellar elastohydrodynamic interactions and motility of flagellated cells in complex external flows.