Bengaluru, India, 2025

Hello, and welcome to my webpage!

I am an engineering researcher passionate about advancing the science of data-driven materials, metamaterials, and geometrically inspired structures. My work lies at the intersection of computational mechanics, wave physics, and architected material design, with a growing emphasis on machine learning and geometric computing in material discovery.

Currently, I am collaborating with Prof. Konstantinos Karapeperis from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) to study the mechanics of granular materials through LS-DEM method and later deploy graph neural networks (GNN) to interpret its behavior.

Thanks for visiting! Dive into my research to see what I actually do. Then, for some controlled intellectual chaos, don’t miss my blog — think of it as peer-reviewed by a jury of imaginary colleagues.

News:

• 🎉 My work on Non-reciprocal Metamaterials from IISc is out here
• 🛠️ Started working on granular mechanics with EPFL (ongoing)
• 🙋‍♂️ Participated in the CISM-IISc workshop on Emerging Topics in Architected & Multiscale Materials, Soft Robotics and Data-Driven Model Discovery (July 21-25, 2025)

🔬 Research Interests

• Inverse design
• Architected materials
• Deployable/origami structures
• Soft robotics
• Geometric computing

📚 Publications

Wave propagation in an elastic lattice with non-reciprocal stiffness and engineered damping

Harshit Kumar Sandhu, Saurav Dutta, Rajesh Chaunsali^ (*sole author ^corresponding author )

Journal of Acoustical Society of America (Special issue on Active and Tunable Acoustic Metamaterials, under minor revision)

Project page | Paper

🔁 Non-reciprocity tunes the wave's group velocity, frequency and amplification rate

Hetero-EUCLID: Interpretable model discovery for heterogeneous hyperelastic materials using stress-free unsupervised learning

Kanhaiya lal Chaurasiya, Saurav Dutta, Siddanth Kumar, Akshay Joshi^ (*co-first author ^corresponding author )

Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering (under review)

Project page

🧠 Unsupervised model discovery without stress input — interpretable and automatic.

Identification of critical ground motion features for seismic fragility studies considering soil-structure interaction

Srishti Singh, Manish Kumar, Saurav Dutta, Vishwajit Anand^ (*sole author ^corresponding author )

Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering (under review)

Project page

Framework for Ground Motion Characterization

Saurav Dutta*, Vishwajit Anand^ (*sole first author ^corresponding author )

In Seismic Hazard Analyses, Wave Propagation and Site Characterization, Springer Nature Singapore, pp. 355–366

Project page | Paper

🧪 Research Experience

Prior to collaborating with Prof. Kostas from EPFL, I worked for over two years as a Research Associate at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, focusing on the intersection of wave physics, materials, machine learning and scientific computing.

At IISc, I began in Prof. Rajesh Chaunsali’s group, investigating wave control in non-reciprocal spring-damper lattices. I developed MATLAB simulations to study dynamic behavior in odd systems and simultaneously worked on building an active experimental setup using motors. I implemented low-level motor synchronization in Python and Arduino (parallely on C++), enabling real-time modulation of pendulums with programmable springs.

Subsequently, I joined Prof. Akshay Joshi’s group to work on inverse design of heterogenous non-linear materials. I contributed to the EUCLID framework by developing random seed-based algorithms for material segmentation and building physics-informed pipelines to infer hyperelastic properties from displacement data. This work integrated Finite Element Analysis, unsupervised learning, and PDE solvers, and was presented at Europian Solid Mechanics Conference (ESMC) 2025 in Lyon, France.

My computational foundation was laid during my undergraduate studies at NIT Silchar. I collaborated with Prof. Atanu Sahu on finite element modeling of laminated composite plates under thermal and dynamic loading, later extended to hygrothermal coupling. Prior to that, I worked with Prof. Vishwajit Anand at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) BHU, Varanasi, where I developed MATLAB scripts to estimate dynamic parameters of structures under seismic waves.

🎤 Invited Talks

Guest Lecturer

“Wave Propagation in Designed Materials”
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, November 2023

• Introduced the fundamentals of non-reciprocal wave behavior in metamterials.
• Explained dispersion phenomena and band gap formation in non-reciorocal systems.
• Engaged in interactive discussion with graduate students and researchers on applications in phononic materials.

🛠️ Research & Coursework Projects

“Experimental Design of 1-DOF Active Interacting Pendulum System”
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

Developed Python motor control code and designed 3D-printed pendulum and disc models integrating motors. Built a 1-DOF pendulum system with fixed-fixed boundary conditions aimed at initial Time Crystal studies. Also created and optimized a Digital Image Correlation (DIC) code using OpenCV and computer vision tools for precise system tracking.

“Static & Dynamic Analysis of a Laminated Composite Plates using ABAQUS”
National Institute of Technology, Silchar, India

Simulated the thermal and dynamic response of laminated composite plates in ABAQUS under various boundary and thermal conditions, gaining foundational expertise in FEM analysis, meshing strategies, and interpreting complex post-processing data from multilayered structures.

“Design & Analysis of a G+4 Residential Building”
National Institute of Technology, Silchar, India

Developed and analyzed a G+4 residential building model in ETABS, designing beams, columns, and reinforcement in accordance with IS Code standards, including seismic confinement detailing. Conducted wind and earthquake load analyses following IS Code provisions to ensure structural safety and compliance.

🎨 Hobbies

When I’m not untangling research chaos, I unwind by philosophizing about the cosmos and the planets with aero-astro friends or my space enthusiast guys and waging dramatic battles on the chessboard, where I’m proudly in my ‘intermediate but plotting world domination’ era.

I also like playing guitar and love listening to melancholic music, Whenever I spot a guitar in the room, I instinctively pick it up to check if my muscle memory has survived its 3–4 year sabbatical. Some days I surprise myself, other days the strings remind me why I switched to science.