Research interests in the laboratory mainly lie in the broad areas of tissue biomechanics, cell mechanobiology and biomaterials & biomimetics. The overall goals include applying methods in mechanics to understand and quantify biological systems. At the scale of tissues, we use methods in nonlinear mechanics, viscoelasticity, and poroelasticity to quantify the properties of naturally occurring biomaterials and those fabricated using synthetic polymers. Specific systems of interest lie in arterial mechanics and in insect based biomaterials. We use advanced imaging techniques, molecular biology tools and mechanical characterization in our studies.