Dr. Rahul Agarwal

Education

• Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering - IIT Kharagpur (2022)
  Thesis Supervisor- Prof. Suman Chakraborty; Microfluidics and Point-of-Care Medical Diagnostics
• M.S. in Mechanical Engineering- Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, U.S. (2017)
  Thesis Supervisor- Prof. Gerald Morrison; Computational Analysis of a Centrifugal Pump
• B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering- IIT Indore (2015)
  Thesis Supervisor- Prof. Gautam Biswas; Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Nanoscale Osmosis

Experience

• Assistant Professor, JBMSHST, IIT Guwahati (2025-Present)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Physics and Materials Science, Anupam Sengupta Group, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2024-2025). Link
• Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Engineering, Marc Madou Group, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico (2022-2024). Link

Research Interest

Biosensing & Biophysics Lab; "From biosensors to digital twins: the biophysics of blood and disease."

1. Digital Twins and Hemodynamics of Neurovascular Disease

   What if a surgeon could see how a patient's brain blood flow will respond to an operation before the operation itself? That is where this theme is headed. The lab studies the fundamental physics of how blood flows and deforms, and turns it into patient-specific digital twins of neurovascular disease such as moyamoya, aneurysms, and stenosis, where a faithful model of an individual's blood flow can guide how neurosurgeons plan a procedure. Building these digital twins draws on theoretical modelling of blood flow, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of diseased vessels, and experimental microfluidic disease models such as hydrogel-based vessel constructs that reproduce a diseased geometry and test the simulations against real flow. A student can take up any one of these approaches or move between them, so there is a place here whether your strength is analysis, simulation, or the bench.

   Ongoing Projects:
   • Planning revascularization in moyamoya disease
   • Surgical planning for intracranial aneurysm clipping
   • Hemodynamic significance of cerebral arterial stenosis


2. Microfluidics, Biosensing, and Point-of-Care Medical Devices

   Imagine shrinking a hospital pathology lab onto a chip you can hold in your hand. That is the heart of this theme: portable microfluidic devices and biosensors that read biomarkers from a single drop of blood or body fluid, so a test that once needed a central laboratory can run at the bedside, in a clinic, or out in the field. You might design the chip, build the biosensor, develop the assay, or decode the signal, and students from the life sciences, chemistry, pharmacy, and engineering each find a natural way in. The work is hands-on and tangible, and you need no modelling or coding background to begin.

   Ongoing Projects:
   • Point-of-care microfluidic blood viscometer and cell-deformability device, for anemia and pre-eclampsia
   • Mechanistic hemorheology of sepsis
   • Microfluidic device for low-cost point-of-care sepsis triage
   • Composition-dependent blood rheology and viscosity


3. Microplastics, Biofilms, and Microbial Flows

   The lab studies how microbes, biofilms, and microplastics move and interact in flows, and what that means for human health and the environment. Questions include how shear flow shapes biofilm growth, how pathogens travel at the micro-scale, how microplastics carry biofilms into the body, and how microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) can be harnessed. The work runs from fundamental transport physics to health and environmental impact and combines experiment and simulation, suiting students from biology, environmental science, and engineering.

   Ongoing Projects:
   • Hydrodynamics of biofilm-coupled microplastics

Key publications

• Rahul Agarwal, Sergio Omar Martinez Chapa, and Marc Jozef Madou. "Theoretical analysis of immunochromatographic assay and consideration of its operating parameters for efficient designing of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I (hs-cTnI) detection." Scientific Reports 13.1 (2023): 18296.DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-45050-1. (IF: 4.6). Link
• Rahul Agarwal, Arnab Sarkar, Arka Bhowmik, Devdeep Mukherjee, and Suman Chakraborty. "A portable spinning disc for complete blood count (CBC)." Biosensors and Bioelectronics 150 (2020): 111935. DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2019.111935. (IF: 12.5) Link
• Rahul Agarwal, Arnab Sarkar, Subhechchha Paul, and Suman Chakraborty. "A portable rotating disc as blood rheometer." Biomicrofluidics 13, no. 6 (2019): 064120. DOI: 10.1063/1.5128937. (IF: 3.2). Link
• Rahul Agarwal, Arnab Sarkar, and Suman Chakraborty. "Interplay of Coriolis effect with rheology results in unique blood dynamics on a compact disc." Analyst 144, no. 12 (2019): 3782-3789. DOI: 10.1039/C9AN00645A. (IF: 4.2). Link
• Rahul Agarwal, and Suman Chakraborty. "Analytics with blood on hybrid paper-rotating disc device." Sensors and Actuators Reports 4 (2022): 100122. DOI: 10.1016/j.snr.2022.100122. (IF: 5.9) . Link
• Rahul Agarwal, Abhay Patil, and Gerald Morrison. "Efficiency Prediction of Centrifugal Pump Using the Modified Affinity Laws." Journal of Energy Resources Technology 142, no. 3 (2020): 032102. DOI: 10.1115/1.4044940. (IF: 3) . Link
• Masoud Madadelahi, Rahul Agarwal, S.O.M. Chapa, and Marc J. Madou. "A roadmap to high-speed polymerase chain reaction (PCR): COVID-19 as a technology accelerator." Biosensors and Bioelectronics 244 (2023): 115830. DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2023.115830. (IF: 12.5). Link
• Victor Pakira, Rahul Agarwal, Subhamoy Chatterjee, Arghya Mukherjee, and Suman Chakraborty. "Lipidest: a lipid profile screening test under extreme point of care settings using a portable spinning disc and an office scanner." Analytical Methods 15, no. 20 (2023): 2427-2440. DOI: 10.1039/D3AY00412K. (IF: 3.1). Link
• Abhiram Hens, Rahul Agarwal, Gautam Biswas. “Nanoscale study of boiling and evaporation in a liquid Ar film on a Pt heater using molecular dynamics simulation.” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 71 (2014): 303-312. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2013.12.032. (IF: 5.2). Link
• Gerald Morrison, Wenjie Yin, Rahul Agarwal, and Abhay Patil. "Evaluation of effect of viscosity on an electrical submersible pump." In ASME 2017 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting. American Society of Mechanical Engineers Digital Collection, 2017. DOI: 10.1115/FEDSM2017-69157. Link

Patents

• Rahul Agarwal, Arka Bhowmik, Arnab Sarkar, Devdeep Mukherjee, Suman Chakraborty. “A Point of Care System Comprising Blood/Body Fluid Counting Kit”. Patent No. 568043. (Granted).

Join Us

These interdisciplinary challenges welcome students from biotechnology, chemistry, pharmacy, as well as core engineering fields such as mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering—inviting all to innovate where medicine, biology, and next-generation healthcare technology converge. We enthusiastically welcome applications from students and researchers with an interest in any approach—whether experimental, computational, or theoretical. Join us to shape the future of interdisciplinary biomedical innovation!

If you are interested to apply or know more, please send an email to: rahulag@iitg.ac.in.

External Profiles

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