Rate My Professor Jagan Rajagopalan

Jagan Rajagopalan is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Materials Science in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy at Arizona State University. He earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, an M.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2004, and a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2004. After completing his doctorate, he worked as a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2009 to 2011. In 2012, he joined Arizona State University as an Assistant Professor in the same school, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018.

Rajagopalan's research specializes in the synthesis of nanocrystalline materials with tailored microstructures, mechanics of nanostructured metal and alloy films, MEMS for in situ materials testing at the nanoscale, and polymer-based microdevices for cell mechanics studies and biohybrid platforms. His work also addresses mechanics of cells and biological systems, investigating links between mechanical tension and biochemical functions in neurons, neuromuscular junctions, cardiomyocytes, and fibroblasts. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2015, delivered a keynote presentation at the U.S. National Congress on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in 2010, received a best paper award nomination at the Society of Engineering Science Conference in 2008, the Mavis Memorial Fellowship from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007, and the Graduate College Conference Travel Award from the same institution in 2007. Key publications include "Plastic deformation recovery in freestanding nanocrystalline metal thin films" in Science (2007), "Synthesis of thin films with highly tailored microstructures" in Materials Research Letters (2018), "Effect of plastic anisotropy on the deformation behavior of bicrystalline aluminum films – experiments and modeling" in Acta Materialia (2018), "High strength and ductility in a heterostructured nanotwinned Ni film" (2022), "Mechanical behavior of microstructurally architected nanotwinned-nanocrystalline Ni films" (2025), "Integration of an Axially Continuous Graphene with Functional Metals for High-Temperature Electrical Conductors" (2023), and "Texture dependent strain rate sensitivity of ultrafine-grained aluminum films" in Scripta Materialia (2016).