Vinu Unnikrishnan
Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering
Office: ECS 221E
Email: vunnikrishnan@wtamu.edu
Phone: 806-651-2507
Professional Profile
Dr. Unnikrishnan joined the College of Engineering as an Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering in January 2019. He received the Bachelor of Technology degree from the University of Kerala, India, Master of Science degree from The Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, College Station, all in Civil Engineering. He was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Mechanical Engineering also at Texas A&M University. Prior to joining WTAMU, he was an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Department at The University of Alabama. He is also a Professional Affiliate Member of The Laura W. Bush Institute for Women's Health, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, from May 2019 onwards.
Teaching and Related Service
Dr. Unnikrishnan teaches Civil, Mechanical and General Engineering courses such as Engineering Dynamics, Structural Analysis and Theory of Elasticity. He has taught previously Algorithms Development and Implementation, Mechanics of Materials and Multiscale Modeling of Composites.
Dr. Unnikrishnan is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Society of Composites (ASC) and Materials Research Society (MRS). He is a member of the AIAA Materials Technical Committee (since 2013) and also serves on the Materials Research Society Awards Nomination Subcommittee since August 2019.
He is currently the Associate Editor of Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures and has been a National Science Foundation (NSF) panel reviewer in 2018 and 2019. He has also been a member of the technical/organizing committee of numerous national and international conferences and have organized numerous minisymposia at leading technical conferences.
At WTAMU, he currently serves as a member of the Graduate Advisory Committee in the School of Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics.
He was awarded the Travel Grant for the EPSCoR Director’s National Meeting at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in June, 2018, and the U.S. Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship, at the Air Force Research Laboratory, in 2015 and 2016.
Research and Creative Activity
Dr. Unnikrishnan’s research interests include computational mechanics, experimental design- development, and computational modeling and simulation of soft materials and multifunctional nanocomposites. He has successfully developed state-of-the-art computational tools for the analysis of human pathologies, with a focus on developing market driven prototypes technologies using novel biomaterials for which he holds the two United States patents. His current focus is on developing novel computational tools for the analysis of thermal conductance of multifunctional carbon nanotube junctions and composites for aerospace and industrial applications, and anisotropic characterization of soft polymeric composite materials.
Dr. Unnikrishnan holds 2 U.S. patents on biofidelic soft skin simulants and customized insoles for diabetic and pressure ulcers, has authored over 42 journal papers and 90 conference publications and 4 book chapters on various topics in mechanics of nano- and biomaterials. He has also given numerous invited lectures and has been an invited speaker at numerous conferences nationally and internationally.