Advancing the frontier of enabling materials – Ramathasan Thevamaran earns tenure and is promoted to Associate Professor

It is with great pleasure the Department of Mechanical Engineering announces the promotion of Ramathasan Thevamaran, PhD to Associate Professor. 

When Thevamaran joined UW-Madison, he had a vision of establishing a research lab that advances the fundamental knowledge of process-structure-property-function relations in structured materials and creates innovative structured materials with extreme mechanical properties. Seven years later, his vision continues to take shape through his lab’s focus on two research thrusts: hierarchical and nanostructured materials for next generation protective materials and non-Hermitian metamaterials for hypersensitive sensors, enhanced actuators, and vibration isolators. Some examples of his accomplishments include:

• Being published in several top journals in the mechanics and materials fields such as Nature, Science, Nature Communications, Nano Letters, Extreme Mechanics Letters, Acta Materialia, and Experimental Mechanics. 
• Receiving numerous federal grants from the Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, and Department of Energy for his research. 
• Earning a Early Career Faculty Award by NASA, in 2022, to develop next generation materials for dimensionally stable space structures. 
• Earlier this year, he received the Vilas Early Career Investigator Award, which is awarded to the most outstanding junior faculty at the UW-Madison.

Outside of research, Thevamaran values the importance of creating a space where students can grow. “In addition to advancing the frontier of enabling materials through fundamental research, I also envisioned my lab to function as an incubator that facilitates the growth of next generation scientists and engineers”, says Thevamaran. He mentors a diverse group of aspiring students and postdoctoral researchers by cultivating a collegial and collaborative atmosphere that supports their professional and personal developments. He has been teaching three Engineering Mechanics and Aerospace (EMA) courses since he joined UW-Madison—EMA405: Practicum in Finite Elements (undergraduate-level), EMA/EP615: Micro- and Nanoscale Mechanics (undergraduate/graduate-level), and EMA700: Theory of Elasticity (graduate-level) with the latter two developed by himself. His strong commitment to teaching with evidence of exceptional contributions to engineering mechanics education has been recognized with the 2021 Ferdinand P. Beer and E. Russel Johnston, Jr., Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award from the American Society for Engineering Education.

Looking forward, Thevamaran is excited to continue his journey as a researcher, an inventor, and an educator. His research is swiftly expanding in both fundamental and applied directions with collaborations across academia, national labs, and industry. He is also part of two consortiums at UW-Madison: The Center for Traumatic Brain Injury and the Center for Extreme Events and Structurally Evolving Materials. “There is a pleasure in discovering new things and enabling a better future for everyone. Beyond our intrinsic motivations, we have a moral obligation to enable such a future for our next generation”, says Thevamaran.

Prof. Ramathasan Thevamaran is the Bernard A. and Frances M. Weideman Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering. We are excited to see what Thevamaran accomplishes next!