Title: Affiliate
Company: Georgia Institute of Technology
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Thendral Govindaraj, an affiliate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Engineers for dedication, achievements, and leadership in mechanical engineering and engineering education.
Though still early in her professional journey, Dr. Govindaraj has already demonstrated an impressive degree of drive, curiosity and resilience. She was first introduced to science by her father, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who encouraged her to read “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out” by Richard Feynman. From that point, Dr. Govindaraj embraced science, learning about topics like the avian flu, climate change and renewable energy in middle school, and always discussing them with her father. She recalls how he would help her whenever she struggled with homework, aiding her in building the confidence to solve challenging math problems on her own.
Tragically, Dr. Govindaraj lost her father to a heart attack when she was just 13 years old. To honor his memory and help recover from this traumatic loss, she spent the rest of her high school years heavily focused on her studies and becoming more involved in extracurricular activities. After graduating, she chose to attend Harvey Mudd College, part of The Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five undergraduate colleges and two graduate schools located in Claremont, California. She chose Harvey Mudd College due to its reputation for excellent teaching and its status as a liberal arts institution with a strong focus on science and engineering.
While attending Harvey Mudd College, she served as a machine shop proctor for the school’s department of engineering for several months and completed an internship at Natureback. Among other endeavors at that time, she primarily conducted research in the transdermal transport lab under the direction of Professor Nancy Lape, focusing on projects that explored the mechanical properties of skin. Dr. Govindaraj obtained a Bachelor of Science in engineering with an emphasis in environmental analysis in 2016. Her research opportunities encouraged her to pursue a PhD, but she also decided to shift her focus to locomotion and spinal cord physiology.
This area of study led Dr. Govindaraj to enroll at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she studied under the guidance of Professor Richard Nichols in biological sciences and Professor Greg Sawicki in mechanical engineering. She contributed for a brief time as a graduate student researcher at Emory University’s School of Medicine, followed by roles as a graduate teaching assistant and graduate student researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. During this period, Dr. Govindaraj developed a unique approach to her work that blends lessons from biology and engineering, creating an intersection of the two fields that can yield new discoveries. In 2024, she earned both a Master of Science and a PhD in mechanical engineering.
Dr. Govindaraj considers her PhD to be her most notable achievement. She is particularly proud of the conclusions she reached in her dissertation, which focused on research related to how reflex feedback to the spinal cord affects limb stiffness and joint coordination. Dr. Govindaraj created a simple neuromechanical model that could have noteworthy implications for how patients go through rehabilitation after suffering a spinal cord injury or stroke. She believes that her computational modeling approach could be used to address a wide variety of questions.
Since completing her PhD program, Dr. Govindaraj has remained at the Georgia Institute of Technology as an affiliate, allowing her to continue her research efforts and make submissions to academic journals through the institution. Moving into the future, she is eagerly looking for opportunities to integrate her spinal reflex findings into exoskeletons, bringing her computational model into the real world. Dr. Govindaraj may pursue this path by remaining in the academic world, completing a postdoctoral position and eventually becoming a professor, or she may seek work at a rehabilitation center or at an exoskeleton production company. In addition to her research work, she enjoys swing dancing and volunteering with Trees Atlanta, a nonprofit devoted to planting and protecting trees in the Atlanta area.
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