Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
Department
Space Robotics
Postal address
Bâtiment L 6, rue Coudenhove-Kalergi L-1359 LUXEMBOURG LUXEMBOURG
Campus office
BLL, E01 018
Contact details
vivek.muralidharan@uni.lu
Vivek Muralidharan, a native of Vadodara, Gujarat, India, is currently a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Space Robotics research group, SpaceR, headed by Prof. Miguel Angel Olivares Mendez at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), Université du Luxembourg. He was born in Payyanur, Kerala, India in 1994.
Vivek graduated with a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), India in 2015. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, he worked on Formula student race cars and was also elected as the captain of the NITK Racing team.
He moved to Purdue University, USA, to pursue a Master of Science (M.S.) degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics, which he completed in 2017. His Master’s thesis was titled Orbit Maintenance Strategies for Sun-Earth/Moon Libration Point Missions: Parameter Selection for Target Point and Cauchy-Green Tensor Approaches . In 2021, Vivek received a Ph.D. for his dissertation titled Stretching Directions in Cislunar Space: Stationkeeping and an Application to Transfer Trajectory Design. He worked under the supervision of Dr. Kathleen Howell at the Multi-Body Dynamics Research Group for both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. His major field of research is Astrodynamics and Space Applications. His research focus includes orbital dynamics, the circular-restricted three-body problem, stationkeeping strategies, orbit determination, as well as guidance, navigation and control.
During the course of his career, he has interned at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in Thiruvananthapuram, India (2013, 2014 and 2016) and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Massachusetts, USA (2019). He also worked at the Purdue University Minority Engineering Program (MEP) while he was a graduate student.
Vivek was featured in the 2022 list of “20 under 35” published by Space and Satellite Professionals International (SSPI). The list honors 20 emerging employees and entrepreneurs in the space industry. He was also a finalist for the Luigi G. Napolitano Award at the 73rd International Astronautical Congress (IAC) 2022 held in Paris, France.
