Vikas Srivastava, former Mechanics Team Lead and Mechanics of Materials and Fitness for Service Research Area Lead at ExxonMobil Upstream Research, has joined the Brown University School of Engineering as assistant professor.
Srivastava was also the Senior Technical Professional Advisor for Mechanics of Materials and an advisor for the Offshore and Infrastructure Novel Idea Forum for the Upstream organizations of ExxonMobil. Additionally, he has served as advisory board member for the Deepstar joint industry consortium on high pressure, high temperature subsea systems with industry partners that included Anadarko, Chevron and Statoil.
Srivastava's research interests lie in the field of solid mechanics, including biomechanics, biophysics, cell and tissue mechanics, biomaterials, soft material physics, novel drug delivery systems, and material response in extreme environments.
He has worked in high-speed turbo-machinery and energy industries in various leadership and research positions. Previously, he held Subsea and Arctic Senior Research Engineer, Deepwater Drilling Coordinator and Marine Team Lead positions at ExxonMobil. Srivastava also worked at ExxonMobil Corporate Strategic Research in New Jersey for two years where he was a co-principal investigator on a grant sponsored by the ExxonMobil-MIT Energy Initiative.
Srivastava graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 2010, where he worked on mechanics of soft materials and biocompatible shape memory polymers. Passionate about studying the role of fundamental mechanics in applications ranging from the biomedical sciences to large scale engineering structures in the energy industry, Srivastava said, "I am looking forward to establishing my research group, leveraging the strength of Brown to solve some of the greatest challenges facing biomedical and mechanical engineers today, in order to make a global impact on society."