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Mrityunjay Kothari 

With a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award, a 91��Ƭ�� professor aims to solve an engineering challenge that could advance technology spanning medicine, manufacturing, and energy. 

, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and integrated applied mathematics, has received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, NSF’s premier award in support of “early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organizations.”

Kothari, whose five-year CAREER grant is for $635,061, will research materials that combine a stretchy solid filled with liquid; this class includes soft tissues in our bodies, hydrogels used in biomedical applications, and even geological media.

“What makes these materials fascinating, and challenging to understand, is that the fluid and the solid are not passive partners,” says Kothari. “When the solid is stretched or squeezed, the fluid inside it redistributes, and when the fluid moves, it changes how the solid responds mechanically.”

Kothari’s group will develop mathematical and computational tools to address what he calls a fundamental problem: The existing scientific tools for understanding these materials break down in the regimes that matter most in real applications — when the material is significantly deformed, and when the fluid content is high. 

“Closing this gap could advance many areas of technology,” he says, including the design of flexible biomedical implants, scaffolds to grow replacement tissue, and better materials for next-generation batteries. 

The CAREER award, Kothari says, funds his vision to integrate research and education.

“The five-year support gives me the freedom to focus on tackling fundamental mechanics challenges along with mentoring and training the next generation of researchers — graduate students, undergraduates, and even middle schoolers through the planned outreach activities — in modern computational and theoretical tools,” he says.

Beyond the immediate research goals, Kothari sees the award as supporting a broader scientific ambition. “This CAREER award supports my long-term goal of developing broadly applicable frameworks that go far beyond solving a one-off problem,” he says. “We aim to advance the field by addressing an entire class of problems and developing frameworks and models that others can use for their specific systems as well.”