Aravind Chenrayan Govindaraju is a graduate student in the Applied Physics Program at Rice University and is currently affiliated with the Bioengineering department. He earned his M.S. in Applied Physics/Bioengineering at Rice University, TX, USA and his B.Tech. in Nanotechnology at SRM University, TN, India. He is currently pursuing his PhD. His research at the Raphael Lab focuses on the study of the sensory epithelia of the vestibular inner ear, particularly the vestibular hair-cell-calyx synapse found in semi-circular canal cristae and the maculae of the otolith organs. Using COMSOL, Aravind is developing a computational model of signal transmission at the vestibular type I synapse to understand it's role in encoding head motion. He is also interested in using optical coherence tomography to image the mouse vestibular system to better understand changes in morphology which occur during conditions such as Meniere's disease.