My current research centres on biophysical problems and the modeling of infectious disease.

Much of my work prior to about 2011 was in the broad fields of statistical physics and soft condensed matter physics, particularly as applied to the vortex state of superconductors. My current biophysical interests are in the following problems: nuclear architecture, axonal transport and cell adhesion, all in the general field of mechanobiology.

However, much of what I do now is tied to developing mathematical and computational models for COVID-19 spread in India. Uderstanding how good models can inform public policy is especially important to me.

Some recent papers:

Paper here

Ankit Agrawal, Nirmalendu Ganai, Surajit Sengupta and Gautam I. Menon, A First-principles Approach to Large-scale Nuclear Architecture Biophysical Journal (2020)

Paper here

Kamal Tripathi and Gautam I Menon, Chromatin Compaction, Auxeticity, and the Epigenetic Landscape of Stem Cells Phys. Rev. X 9, 041020 (2019)

Paper here

Narmada Sambaturu, Sumanta Mukherjee, Martin Lopez-Garcia, Carmen Molina-Paris, Gautam I. Menon and Nagasuma Chandra, Evaluating Epidemiological Impact of Genetic Heterogeneity using Multi-compartment SIR Models for H1N1 Influenza, PLoS Computational Biology (2018) 14(3): e1006069

Renu Mann, Garima Rani, Gautam I. Menon and Pramod Pullarkat, Modeling cell-substrate de-adhesion dynamics under fluid shear Physical Biology, 15 (2018) 046006

Parul Sood, Kausalya Murthy, Vinod Kumar, Michael Nonet, Gautam I Menon and Sandhya P. Koushika, Cargo crowding at actin-rich regions along axons causes local traffic jams in neurons, Traffic (2018) 19:166-181

Varuni Prabhakar, Shakti N. Menon and Gautam I Menon,Modelling Phototaxis as a Collective Phenomenon in Cyanobacterial Colonies, Scientific Reports 7, 17799 (2017)

Ankit Agrawal, Nirmalendu Ganai, Surajit Sengupta and Gautam I. Menon, Chromatin as Active Matter, J. Stat. Mech. 014001 (2017)

Nirmalendu Ganai, Surajit Sengupta and Gautam I. Menon, Chromosome Positioning from Activity-based Segregation, Nucleic Acids Research 42 (7): 4145-4159 (2014)

Shefali Talwar, Abhishek Kumar, Madan Rao, Gautam I. Menon, and G.V. Shivashankar, Structural heterogeneity in chromatin compaction states characterizes stem cells, Biophys. J 104 553-564 (2013)

P. Ranjith and Gautam I. Menon, Stretching and Bending Fluctuations of Short DNA Molecules, Biophys. J 104 463-471 (2013)

Career

• Ph.D, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India (1994) 
• Visiting Fellow, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India (1994-96) 
• Post-doctoral Fellow/Sessional Instructor, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada (1996-98) 
• Fellow, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India (1998-2003) 
• Reader, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India (2003-2006) 
• Associate, Indian Academy of Sciences, India (1996-2001) 
• DST Fast Track Fellowship (2002)
• Swarnajayanti Fellowship (2005)
• Professor, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India (2006-) 
• DAE-SRC Outstanding Research Investigator (2010-) 
• APS Outstanding Referee (2011) 
• Visiting Professor, NUS Singapore (Oct, 2011 - April, 2013 ) 
• Professor H, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India (2012-) 
• Outstanding Reviewer Award: Reports on Progress in Physics, IOP, UK - (2016)  
• Shastri Fellow, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute India (2018) 
• Adjunct Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Mumbai, India (2018-) 
• Professor, Ashoka University, Sonepat, India (Aug 2019-) 
• Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, India (2019-) 

Seminars and Invited Talks