L. Mahadevan

L Mahadevan is Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics (Faculty of Arts and Sciences), at Harvard University.

Mahadevan is a cross-disciplinary scientist who seeks to understand motion and matter at the human scale integrating the physical and biological sciences, mathematics and engineering, and using experiments, theory and computation. 

His recent work includes elucidating the biophysical principles underlying the morphogenesis of organs and organisms, the cognitive dynamics of embodied intelligence in social insects, and the mathematical physics underlying art forms such as origami and kirigami, and musical instruments such as musical saws and steelpan drums. He is a MacArthur Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.