Dr. Ranganathan Gopalakrishnan

Dr. Ranganathan Gopalakrishnan’s Research in a Minute is focused on dust particle behavior in plasmas with an overarching goal of contributing to the realization of nuclear fusion to produce limitless clean energy.

A UofM faculty member since 2016, Gopalakrishnan is an associate professor and the Graduate Program Coordinator in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 2013 after earning a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Tiruchirappalli, India, in 2008.

The work of Gopalakrishnan and his team at the UofM primarily involves analyzing problems related to aerosols, plasmas, and ionized gases. Notably, they have developed and patented a highly efficient powder dispersion method that uses ultrasonic waves to disperse dry powders as aerosols.

“We use both experimental and modeling techniques to understand how particles behave from the molecular scale to the micron scale to the millimeter scale,” Gopalakrishnan said. “What makes this interesting is at every scale the type and the strength of the forces that act between particles keeps changing. That’s what makes the research fascinating, but also challenging.”