N. Nirmal Thyagu
I am Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, Madras Christian College
[MCC], Tambaram, Chennai.. My research interests are broadly in the interdisciplinary area of complex systems that encompass nonlinear dynamics, fluid dynamics, soft matter physics and complex networks. I do theoretical, computational as well as experimental research on the above topics. Update: I moved to MCC from VIT Chennai in Dec 2019. Current Research Areas: 1. Simplicial Characterization of Networks: This is a very recent development over the last few years. We use algebraic topology tools to characterize networks to get the hierarchical levels of complexity embedded in the system. For any network simplicial characterization can bring out the hidden skeleton of complexity which gives deeper insight on the structure and connectivity of the network that are generally not brought out by the conventional characterizers like the clustering coefficient and the path length. (Read our preprints in ArXiv here: a. https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03154 b. https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.00013) 2. Persistent Homology to characterize Dynamics: This is a power tool of an exciting area called Topolgocial Data Analysis [TDA] (part of algebraic topology) and is getting a lot of attention over a decade. Very many interdisciplinary practitioners are using persistent homology to extract hidden patterns out of their data. We in our work likewise use persistent homology to extract dynamical information that is not easily extractable using standard tools. Very interesting and rapidly developing. See my talk #2 below on Youtube. 3. Chaotic advection of inertial particles: Inertial particles in fluid flows have a long standing interest among fluid dynamicists, esp. atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, and chemical engineers. Our interest is to study the qualitative features of the dynamics of inertial particles - both aerosols and bubbles - in generic two-dimensional, in particular, non-turbulent fluid systems. In addition to computational study we are also developing an experimental system for this investigation. 4. Vehicular Traffic and Granular Jamming Both granular media and vehicular motion have lot of commonalities. They are seen to flow and get jammed when they encounter bottleneck - be it obstacles or constriction in the flow path. Statistical mechanics approach to the study of the jamming-unjamming transition is powerful tool to understand the problem. The objectives such as strategies to de-congest a clogged junction or to un-jam a conduit is much sought after. 5. Predator-Prey systems and Competitive growth systems: Despite being more than a century old problem, the predator-prey paradigm to model competition between two or more individuals is still a powerful tool that is used by many practitioners. The competing individuals could be - species, peers, businesses, economies and the likes. When the competitive interactions between the indivuduals are mapped onto a network with long-range interactions, the results indicate that there could be a smart way to win the competition by rewiring. For more details, read our Physics A paper here. Talks: 1. Here is a talk I delivered as a part of the experimental course I gave on chaos in the SERB school on nonlinear dynamics held at SP Pune University: Chaotic Double Pendulum: http://eclm.unipune.ac.in/View.aspx?vid=344&sid=37 2. Here is the talk I gave at ICTS-TIFR, Bangalore in 2018 on Persistent Homology: |
ANNOUNCEMENT & NEWS!
VIT Chennai in Association with Indian Association of Physics Teachers (IAPT), Regional Chapter - 13 (Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry) organizes a one-day workshop entitled ''The Excitement of College Physics" on 6 July 2019 (Saturday) at VIT Chennai. Register online: https://bit.ly/2WTPmjN Download workshop Brochure and Flyer |
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