If you are an undergrad -
At any given time, I tend to have several undergraduates who do research with me (e.g., recent students include Adam Sokolow, Emily Bittle and Anita Moursalian and current students include Jake Miner and Dorian DiCocco). Some students are more active workers than others. I like to work on challenging problems that involve fundamental issues in nonlinear dynamics and statistical physics. I enjoy working on problems which encompass challenging new physics issues and with the possibility of important applications. Although most of my work is on theoretical and simulational aspects, I also like to work with students who wish to do relatively simple experiments. My collaboration with mechanical and aerospace engineering senior Dorian DiCocco on the fabrication and testing of table top shock absorbers is one such project.
If you are a grad -
I am a theoretical/mathematical/simulational/applied physicist. If you look at my publications you will see that my heart is in studying dynamical problems. Over the past decade, I have progressively moved towards studying those problems that involve challenging nonlinear dynamics, where standard theories such as linear response theory, etc. tend to break down and those with interesting applications.
My current projects involve the following. If I have more hands and feet, I am usually ready to take on new challenges, especially if there is a way to relate the new challenges to my knowledge base.
(i) Formation, propagation and collision properties of solitary waves (plain old energy bundles) in alignments of elastic grains
(ii) Breakdown of shock waves using granular systems - basically shock absorption processes
(iii) Exploring whether purely nonlinear systems (examples of such systems are those where there can't be any sound propagation) can equilibrate. This work is related to the famous Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem and we have made some excellent progress in this problem recently. We believe that purely nonlinear systems prompt us to define equilibrium more generally than we do right now.
(iv) Flow of air and dust through low gravity environments and how very, very tiny particles can be effectively removed using "appropriate filters."
(v) Dynamics of systems that exhibit structural phase transitions
(vi) Study of impulse propagation into shallow depths in soil to detect/image buried objects (such as land mines).
In addition, there are projects that are pretty much in the hatching phase - one such project is the construction of an efficient learning model for the brain, another is modeling the development of multiple sclerosis (with my colleague Professor M. Ramanathan in the School of Pharmacy at SUNY-Buffalo).