R. I. Sujith

Sujith Raman Pillai Indusekharan Nair (born 11 May 1967), known as R. I. Sujith, is an Indian aerospace engineer. He is Institute Professor and the D. Srinivasan Chair Professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering at IIT Madras.^[1]

R. I. Sujith
Sujith in his laboratory, 2023
Born	Sujith Raman Pillai Indusekharan Nair (1967-05-11)11 May 1967 Thiruvananthapuram, India
Nationality	Indian
Known for	Thermoacoustic instability and complex systems
Title	D. Srinivasan Institute Chair Professor
Awards	Keshav-Rangnath Excellence in Research Award (2016), Bhagya Lakshmi Krishna Iyengar Award (2015), J. C. Bose Patent Award (2013)
Academic background
Alma mater	Georgia Institute of Technology Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Thesis	Behavior of droplets in axial acoustic fields (1994)
Doctoral advisor	Ben T. Zinn
Academic work
Institutions	Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Website	http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/~sujith/

Early life

Sujith was born on 11 May 1967 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. He completed his Bachelor of Technology in aerospace engineering at IIT Madras. He earned his PhD in aerospace engineering on "Behavior of Droplets in Axial Acoustic Fields" working with Ben T. Zinn at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1994. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the same department from 1994 to 1995. He then joined IIT Madras as a lecturer in the Department of Aerospace Engineering.^[2]

Research

Sujith's research has been in the field of thermo-acoustic instability. He demonstrated that low-amplitude aperiodic pressure fluctuations, or combustion noise, are deterministic and chaotic.^[3][4] He modelled the state of intermittency as the intermediate dynamical state as turbulent thermo-acoustic systems transition from the state of combustion noise to the state of thermo-acoustic instability.^[5] He suggested that combustion noise exhibits multifractality, which vanishes with the onset of instability.^[6] His analogy of the onset of oscillatory instabilities to Bose-Einstein condensation has provided universal scaling laws for various systems.^[7]

Sujith's introduction of complex networks to thermo-acoustics has shown structural changes in network topology during transitions from combustion noise to instability, aiding in early detection of such transitions.^[8][9] His research has involved a variety of topics relevant in thermo-acoustic systems such as the chimera states,^[10] R-tipping,^[11][12] synchronisation theory, amplitude death, partial amplitude death, and phase flip bifurcation.^[13][14]

Honours and awards

In 2023 he was inducted as International Member of the United States National Academy of Engineering.^[15] He was selected as a fellow of the Combustion Institute in 2022,^[16] and was awarded the Distinguished Fellowship of the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration in 2021.^[17] He received the J. C. Bose Fellowship in 2019^[18] and the Swarnajayanti Fellowship in 2005 from the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India.^[19] He is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences,^[20] an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and an honorary fellow of the Indian Society of Systems for Science and Engineering (ISSE). He has been awarded Hans Fischer Senior Fellowship from the TUM Institute for Advanced Study in 2010. He was awarded fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation^[21] in 2000. He was the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Spray and Combustion Dynamics from 2009 to 2015. He is currently a member of the editorial advisory board of Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science.^[22]