Tara Venkatadri

Graduate Student

tvenkata@caltech.edu

Tara joined the Space Structures Laboratory in the summer of 2024 after receiving her Master of Science in Space Engineering from Caltech.  She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP).

Previously, Tara received a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from MIT in 2022, and a Master of Philosophy in Engineering from the University of Cambridge (funded by a Churchill Scholarship) in 2024.  During her time as an undergraduate, her research focused on the deformation of soft materials under torsion, including adhesive delamination and instabilities that arise under combined tension and torsion.  At Cambridge, she studied the behavior of bistable bending and twisting hinges under prestress.  Prior to moving into the field of solid and structural mechanics, she conducted research on space traffic management and lunar geology.

Tara’s current research is on in-space assembly of large structures, focusing on an architecture that uses a stationary robot to assemble structures composed of struts and cables.

Publications:

  • Venkatadri, T. K., Ye, C., Cohen, T., & Lin, S. (2025). Torsion-mediated instabilities in confined elastic layers. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 106064

  • Venkatadri, T., & Seffen, K. (2024). Prestressed behavior of bistable bending and twisting hinges. Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.108756

  • Venkatadri, T. K., Henzel, T., & Cohen, T. (2023). Torsion-induced stick-slip phenomena in the delamination of soft adhesives. Soft Matter, 19(13), 2319-2329

  • Venkatadri, T. K., & James, P. B. (2020). Variations of porosity in intermediate-sized lunar impact basins. Icarus, 352, 113953

  • Venkatadri, T. K., & Petro, N. E. (2019, March). Analyzing ejecta thickness and mixing in the Crisium and Nectaris lunar basins. In Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (No 2132, p 1164)

  • Venkatadri, T. K., & James, P. B. (2017, March). Relatively low porosities detected within lunar farside basins. In Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (No 1964, p 1082)