I am Balaji Shankar Venkatachari. A Grad student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) . As part of the Computational Simulation Laboratory (CSL), I specialize in Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) under the advisory of Dr.Gary Cheng . My current research work deals with development of a transient flow solver base on the CE/SE framework. More details about my research in the Research section .

  Here is my Resume . For all other trivial stuff, read on....

I hail from Tamilnadu, a southern state in India. Most part of life, I grew up in Chennai (formerly Madras), a metropolitan city with a population of 4363568 along the Bay of Bengal. To speak about Chennai, it is one of those places where those deep roots of Indian culture & serenity blend with the hustle & bustle of modernity. My schooling was done at D.A.V Senior secondary school, where my fundamentals of science, mathematics & everything else under the sun was built under the guidance of enthusiastic & motivating teachers. I still cherish the days I had spent there, especially my high- school mathematics class with Ms. Lalitha Thiagarajan , Chemistry class under Ms. Radha Ramabhadran, Tamil (mother tongue) under Ms. Vijayalakshmi , several other classes like Physics, English etc. Not to mention the wonderful sets of friends I had, who now lay scattered all around the globe . For my Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering (B.Tech) I moved to Pondicherry Engineering college in Pondicherry. Pondicherry, a coastal town, was once a part of French occupied territory. Hence, to date you can see a blend of Indo- French architecture with homes painted in "pure white & gray " & roads which cut at ninety degrees. It is also home to the world's first UNESCO setup International Town " "Auroville". Basically a calm , serene & spiritual sea town (To know more Pondicherry, you should read Life of Pi - Yann Martel). It was a great period in my life, as it was the first time that, I was away from my home & parents, a period of learning in that long road to maturity & where once again I was lucky to have met some of wonderful set of friends.After my graduation, I worked for a brief while in Whirlpool of India Ltd, Pondicherry , after which  I landed at UAB in Fall 2002 to do my graduate studies.

contact me at balaji@uab.edu / 205-542 1655