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Welcome to Sundaresan's research group

Active material systems have significantly altered the research landscape in Mechanical Engineering and revolutionized our gadget-centric ecosystem. Fundamental research in active materials explores complex phenomena at the nanoscale in ceramic and polymeric materials to develop energy efficient solutions in engineering for actuation, sensing, energy harvesting and storage. Current active material systems comprise of a single active material designed into a system to achieve a specific engineering function. Integration of two or more active materials at their fundamental length scales of interaction leads to an 'Integrated Active Material System' with novel properties that offers multi-functional behavior and unique systemic advantages in its application environment. The research activities in Integrated Systems Lab at VCU focuses on multiphysics problems to develop integrated material systems through innovative fabrication methods, experimental characterization techniques and advanced modeling constructs that has led to a better understanding of these material systems.

ISL Research

Ongoing research activities carried out in this lab focus on innovative fabrication methods, experimental techniques and theory on the following topics

  • Bioderived Ionic Transistors
  • Ionic liquid pumps
  • Magnetoelectric Materials
  • Self-healing Polymers
  • Surface Synthetic Jets

Welcome to the Integrated Systems Lab and please feel free to write to Dr. Sundaresan if you are interested in a position in this lab.

Research in our group is supported by National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, VCU President's Office and the School of Engineering.

Sponsors

Recent News

05/01/2012
Dr. Sundaresan's group will be moving to Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The Ohio State University from Fall-2012. Please check back for new contact information.

05/01/2012
Dr. Sundaresan receives NSF REU award to support an undergraduate student in summer 2012.

04/16/2012
Dr. Pidaparti and Dr. Sundaresan win Phase-II ONR Grant to investigate pH regulation using tailored bioderived nanostructures for corrosion control

11/30/2011
H. Zhang et al's paper titled Conducting polymer supported bilayer lipid membrane reconstituted with alamethicin published in Smart Material Structures

07/15/2011
Our team of VCU, Astro-Terra Corp and Virginia Tech win ARO STTR Phase I award in 2010 cycle for the proposal titled 'Hierarchically Assembled Self-Healing Material'

04/04/2011
Dr. Pidaparti and Dr. Sundaresan win ONR Grant to investigate pH regulation using tailored bioderived nanostructures for corrosion control

03/03/2011
Dr. Sundaresan wins Qimonda Discretionary Funds for Junior Faculty Professional Development program in VCU School of Engineering

02/07/2011
Dr. Sundaresan wins NSF CAREER award from ENG/CMMI division.

12/16/2010 posted Open positions
Postdoctoral position in MD simulation, Mechanical Engineering Graduate student seeking doctoral degree and interested in Smart Materials.

12/14/2010
Dr. Sundaresan wins the VCU PRIP award for his proposal titled 'Thin-film Ionic Transistor Devices'.

12/8/2010
Our team of VCU, Astro-Terra Corp and Virginia Tech win NASA STTR Phase I award in 2010 cycle for the proposal titled 'Self-Healing Inflatable Extraterrestrial ShieLD (SHIELD)'

10/13/2010
Patent No. 12/889,857 and titled Magnetoelectric Surgical Tools for Minimally Invasive Surgery filed with USPTO

10/2/2010
Talks on Bio-derived ionic transistors and dynamic characterization of magnetoelectric cantilever for surical tools were presented at the ASME SMASIS-10 Conference (Philadelphia, CA) Sep 29-Oct 1, 2010.

03/15/2010
Talks on Dynamic modeling of Magnetoelectric methods and prototyping BLMs to be presented on Mar 10, 2010 in the SPIE Smart structures conference in San Diego, CA,

For older posts, see News and Events tab.