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Madhusudhan (Madhu) Venkadesan
Assistant Professor
Control and Morphology Lab 
National Centre for Biological Sciences
GKVK Campus, Bellary Road
Bangalore 560065, Karnataka, India.
Phone: +91-80-2366 6060
Fax: +91-80-2363 6662
Email: 
Web: http://www.ncbs.res.in/mvlab
Positions available
Two postdoc positions in foot and locomotion biomechanics funded by the HFSP and WellcomeTrust/DBT India Alliance.
Two postdoc positions funded by the NCBS-inStem-CRG Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Two PhD positions (grant funded) in foot and locomotion biomechanics.
Contact me for more details.
Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 2007.
M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 2003.
B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, 2000.
NCBS appointments
Feb 2011 – present: Assistant Professor, NCBS
Other experience
Jan 2011 – present: Associate in Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
June 2008 – Dec 2010: Postdoc in Applied Mathematics and Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
Aug 2007 – May 2008: Postdoc in Mathematics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Sept 2006 – Aug 2007: Postdoc in Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Selected publications
- D.E. Lieberman, M. Venkadesan, W.A. Werbel, A.I. Daoud, S. D’Andrea, I.S. Davis, R.O. Mang’eni, and I. Pitsiladis. Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners. Nature, 463(7280):531–5, 2010.
- M. Venkadesan and F.J. Valero-Cuevas. Effects of neuromuscular lags on controlling contact transitions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 367(1891):1163–1179, 2009.
- M.Venkadesan and F.J. Valero-Cuevas. Neural control of motion-to-force transitions with the fingertip. Journal of Neuroscience, 28(6):1366-1373, 2008.
- M. Venkadesan, J. Guckenheimer, and F.J. Valero-Cuevas. Manipulating the edge of instability. Journal of Biomechanics, 40(8):1653–1661, 2007.
Honours & awards
Sibley School Exceptional Teaching Assistant Award, Cornell University (August 2004).
Journal of Biomechanics Award (August 2006).
WellcomeTrust/DBT India Alliance's Intermediate Fellowship (April 2011 – March 2016).
Human Frontier Science Program's Young Investigator Grant (2013-2016).
Funding support
Keywords
Biomechanics, Motor control, Morphology, Optimal control, Locomotion, Leg, Foot, Arm, Hand, Finger, Dexterity, Grasp, Throwing, Hunting, Walking, Running, Crawling, Jumping, Muscle mechanics, Robotics, Bifurcation theory, Nonlinear dynamical systems, Randomness, Probability, Rigid body mechanics, Numerical methods for dynamical systems.
Research description
My lab studies the interaction between control and morphology in animals and machines. Why do animals often outperform their robotic counterparts in terms of robustness and versatility of motor behaviour? Have animals finely-tuned their morphology through evolution in order to achieve the robustness one associates with biology? How do we extract design and control principles for understanding biomechanical function, the diagnosis and treatment of disease and also for improving the state of robotics and prosthetics? Theoretical efforts drive the design of our experiments and our experimental outcomes often call for new theoretical approaches to analyze and interpret the results. A constant interaction between theory and experiment is vital for our research.