I'm Rajiv "Raj" Giridharagopal. I'm a graduate student in the Electrical Engineering department at Rice University. My research focuses on atomic-scale investigation of conducting polymer systems using the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), unless my advisor Kevin Kelly changes his mind. Our group made some minor news with the nanocar and the so-called "single pixel camera."

No, I am not involved in either project. Go me!

Use the links at the left for more information, if that floats your boat. You don't need to bother with the "contact" link, though. I only added that because the box looked empty with just three links. I'll save you the trouble and just say to email rajivg at rice dot edu. There's probably a more "spam-proof" way of writing my email address.

I successfully defended my Master's thesis on 10.4.2006, which I guess means that the government will declare that a national holiday soon enough. If you weren't there, you missed an unnecessarily long and boring talk :) For your perusal, here is my thesis in a svelte 33MB PDF of hardcore, STM-on-polymer action!

More recently, my first ever first-author paper (and second overall paper) was been accepted for publication in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. Awesome^max! Here is the paper, though unless you are at an educational institution or chemical-related company, there's a good chance you won't be able to read the paper. If you give a damn, email me and I'll send you a copy. Seeing as I'm now well on my way to being an academic rock (rawk?) star, I ask that you contact my agent for autographs. I charge $1000000 per autograph; the fee sounds outrageous, but all I need is one fan (sucker?) and I'm set for life.