Suraj Shankar

Suraj Shankar is a physicist interested in how collective phenomena emerges in soft materials and living systems. He was previously a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and received his PhD in physics from Syracuse University. His current research focuses on understanding the functional consequences of nonequilibrium phenomena in synthetically engineered materials and in the context of biological processes such as morphogenesis. His work employs a combination of theoretical modeling, computational analysis, and table-top experiments with a strong emphasis on aspects of geometry, topology, and control.

Suraj is deeply committed to advancing diversity, equity, and belonging in STEM fields, and mentoring underrepresented students at Michigan. He has engaged in LGBTQ-STEM visibility campaigns and is currently working on a project to highlight and document historically unrecognized contributions of marginalized scientists in the fields of nonlinear dynamics and chaos.