My research brings together interfacial physics, materials engineering, and soil physics to understand how water moves, is retained, and evaporates in porous media. Building on my background in wetting and micro/nanofabrication, I investigate how pore structure, surface chemistry, and capillary forces govern soil–water interactions. I am particularly interested in resolving these processes at micro- and nanoscales and connecting them to soil-scale heat and water transport, with applications in biochar-amended soils and water conservation in arid environments.

1. Marcus Lin, Peng Zhang, Aaron D Ratschow, Oscar Li, Sankara Arunachalam, and Dan Daniel ' Spontaneous Coulomb fissions of drops on lubricated surfaces' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2026, 123 (18), e2538161123.  
2. Abhijitkumar Kushwaha, Sankara Arunachalam, Ville Jokinen, Dan Daniel, and  Tadd Truscott ' Unraveling friction forces of droplets on a non-wetting surface ' Physical Review Fluids, 10, 103603 (2025). 
3. Parham Koochak, Marcus Lin, Ali Afzhalifar, Sankara Arunachalam, Ayan Shoaib, Valtterri Turkki, Dan Daniel, Maja Vuckovac, and William S. Y. Wong ‘Self-Accelerating Drops on Silicone-Based Super Liquid-Repellent Surfaces’ ACS Nano 2025, 19, 25, 23105-2319. 
4. Sankara Arunachalam, Marcus Lin and Dan Daniel 'Probing the physical origins of droplet friction using a critically damped cantilever' Soft Matter, 2024, 20, 7583 (selected for Journal cover and Emerging investigators series)
5. Sankara Arunachalam*, Muhammad S. Sadullah, Himanshu Mishra 'Insect-Inspired Breathing Interfaces: Investigating Robustness of Coating-Free Gas Entrapping Microtextured Surfaces Under Pressure Cycles' Nature Communications Engineering, 3, 84 (2024). Selected for topical collection entitled "Bioinspired Engineering". (*Corresponding Author)
6. Sankara Arunachalam*, Himanshu Mishra 'Collective Wetting Transitions of Submerged Gas-Entrapping Microtextured Surfaces' Droplet, e135 (2024). (Journal Cover). (*Corresponding Author)
7. Muhammad S. Sadullah, Yinfeng Xu, Sankara Arunachalam, Himanshu Mishra 'Predicting droplet detachment force: Young-Dupré Model Fails, Young-Laplace Model Prevails' Nature Communications Physics, 2024; 7(1):1-9.
8. Marcus Lin, Philseok Kim, Sankara Arunachalam, Rifan Hardian, Solomon Adera, Joanna Aizenberg, Xi Yao, and Dan Daniel 'Emergent collective motion of self-propelled condensate droplets', Physical Review Letters, 2024, 132: 058203. 
9. Meng Shi, Ratul Das, Sankara Arunachalam, Himanshu Mishra 'Suppression of Leidenfrost effect on superhydrophobic surfaces' Physics of Fluids, 2021, 33 (12), 122104.
10. Sankara Arunachalam, Zain Ahmad, Ratul Das, Himanshu Mishra, 'Counterintuitive Wetting Transitions in Doubly Reentrant Cavities as a Function of Surface Make‐Up, Hydrostatic Pressure, and Cavity Aspect Ratio' Advanced Materials Interfaces, 2020, 7 (22), 2001268. (Journal cover) 
11. Silvestre Roberto, Nguyen Dang Minh, Sankara Arunachalam, Eddy Domingues, Claus-Dieter Ohl, Himanshu Mishra 'Mitigating cavitation erosion using biomimetic gas-entrapping microtextured surfaces' Science Advances, 2020, 6 (13), eaax6192
12. Sankara Arunachalam, Eddy M. Domingues, Ratul Das, Jamilya Nauruzbayeva, Ulrich Buttner, Ahad Syed, and Himanshu Mishra 'Rendering SiO2/Si surfaces omniphobic by carving gas-entrapping microtextures comprising reentrant and doubly reentrant cavities or pillars' JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments), 2020,  (156), e60403.
13. Ratul Das, Sankara Arunachalam, Zain Ahmad, Ahad Syed, Ulrich Buttner, and Himanshu Mishra 'A Proof-of-Concept for Gas-Entrapping Membranes (GEMs) Derived from Water-loving SiO2/Si/SiO2 Wafers for Green Desalination'. JoVE, 2020, 157 (e60583 ). 
14. Gauri A. Mahadik, Jose F. Hernández Sánchez, Sankara Arunachalam, Adair Gallo Junior, Andreia S. Farinha, Sigurdur T. Thoroddsen, Himanshu Mishra and Carlos M. Duarte, "Superhydrophobicity and size reduction enabled Halobates (Insecta: Heteroptera, Gerridae) to colonize the open ocean" Scientific Reports, 2020, 10(1), 7785
15. Ratul Das#, Sankara Arunachalam#, Zain Ahmad, Edelberto Manalastas, Himanshu Mishra, 'Bio-inspired gas-entrapping membranes (GEMs) derived from common water-wet materials for green desalination' Journal of Membrane Science. 117185, (2019). This article was featured at Scidev.net and KAUST Discovery. (# Equal contribution)   
16. Sankara Arunachalam, Ratul Das, Jamilya Nauruzbayeva, Eddy Domingues, Himanshu Mishra, 'Assessing omniphobicity by immersion', Journal of Colloid and Interface Science. 534 156-162, (2019). This article was featured at  KAUST Discovery  
17. Navaladian Subramanian, Adnan Qamar, Ahmad Alsaadi, Adair Gallo Jr., Mohammed Ghifari, Jung-Gil Lee, Sreekiran Pillai, Sankara Arunachalam, Dalaver Anjum, Noreddine Ghaffour, Felix Sharipov, Himanshu Mishra, 'Evaluating the potential of superhydrophobic nanoporous alumina membranes for direct contact membrane distillation' Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 533 723-732, (2019).
18. Eddy Domingues#, Sankara Arunachalam#, Jamilya Nauruzbayeva, Himanshu Mishra' Biomimetic coating-free surfaces for long-term entrapment of air under wetting liquids' Nature Communications, 9 (1), 3606, (2018). This article was featured at Nature Chemistry Community Blogposts and  KAUST discovery. (# Equal contribution) 
19. Eddy Domingues#, Sankara Arunachalam#, Himanshu Mishra 'Doubly Reentrant Cavities Prevent Catastrophic Wetting Transitions on Intrinsically Wetting Surfaces', ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2017, 9 (25), 21532-21538. This article was featured at Engineers Australia, EurekAlert!, Phys.org and KAUST Discovery. (# Equal contribution)

Ph.D., Environmental Science and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, 2023

M.Eng., Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India, 2011

B.E., Aeronautical Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, India, 2009

Post-doctoral fellow, Interficial lab, KAUST, 2026-Present

Post-doctoral fellow, SuPER lab, KAUST, 2025-2026

Post-doctoral fellow, Droplet lab, KAUST, 2023-2025

Research Specialist, Interfacial lab, KAUST, 2015-2020                                                                                                                                                                                                  

R & D Engineer, BEML Ltd, India, 2011-2015

• Dean’s award for outstanding academic performance in my Ph.D. program at KAUST
• Cover Article, Advanced Materials Interfaces (2020), DOI:10.1002/admi.202001268 
• Cover Article, Droplet (2024), DOI:10.1002/dro2.143
• Cover Article, Soft Matter (2024), DOI:10.1039/d4sm00601a 
• First prize for water rocketry at ‘Tech Tatva’ National level technical fest, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal. 8-11th October 2008
• Best design and First prize at ‘Zephyer’ National level aqua jet competition, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. 2007 

Interfacial Laboratory (iLab)

Water Desalination and Research platform (WDRP)

Division of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE)