Venugopalan has joint faculty appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering. 

B.S., University of California, Berkeley, Mechanical Engineering, 1988
M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, 1990
Sc.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, 1994

Venugopalan's research focuses on laser-induced thermal, mechanical and radiative transport processes for application in medical diagnostics, therapeutics, biotechnology, and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS).

Venugopalan's lab currently has three major research thrusts: 1) optical spectroscopic methods to non-invasively measure the optical and physiological properties of biological tissues for diagnosis and monitoring; 2) imaging of biological tissues using time-resolved optical interferometric methods; 3) development of pulsed laser microbeam methods for cellular manipulation and modification with applications for cellular microsurgery, microanalysis and MEMS.

Venugopolan holds joint faculty appointments at the Beckman Laser Institute and in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He has extensive research collaborations with faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the College of Medicine.

Research Topics: Optical diffusion theory, photothermal and photomechanical phenomena.