Vikram S Deshpande

Vikram Sudhir Deshpande (born 29 February 1972), is an Indian-born British engineer and materials scientist. He is currently Professor of Materials Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

Early life and education Deshpande grew up in Dadar, Mumbai, studied at Bombay Scottish School in Mahim, and gained a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1994. That year, he moved to Cambridge, UK to take an M.Phil. in engineering, initially working on transportation with David Cebon, and earning his Ph.D. in 1998.

Career Later, he became interested in materials and mechanics, including small-scale materials, and began a long collaboration with Norman Fleck on micro-architectured materials. After further research in the United States, he returned to Cambridge, became a fellow of Pembroke College in 1999, a lecturer in engineering in 2001, and a professor in 2010. He is the current editor in chief of the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids (JMPS).

Research and achievements

His achievements include the development of "metallic wood", which comprises nickel sheet with wood-like, nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium but four to five times lighter.

Awards

Deshpande has received multiple awards for his work, including the Warner T. Koiter Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2022, William Prager Medal, in 2022, the 2021 Gili Agostinelli Prize, the 2020 Rodney Hill Prize in Solid Mechanics awarded by IUTAM International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, the 2018 Sir William Hopkins Prize in Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and the 2003 Philip Leverhulme Prize. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2023 for "seminal contributions to the mechanics of engineering materials". He was elected a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2023 "for contributions to mechanics of microarchitected solids with applications to structures under extreme dynamic loading". . In November 2024 he was awarded the Zdenek P. Bazant Medal for Failure and Damage Prevention for pioneering contributions to damage and failure prevention of metal alloys, lattice-cored sandwich structures, and micro-architected materials across length scales. In November 2025, he was awarded the Nadai Medal for his significant advancements in “microstructural mechanics” through pioneering new architected materials, linking theory and experiment across scales, and broadening the field of materials engineering with novel materials design, failure mechanics, and innovative applications. In August 2026, Deshpande was awarded the Satya N. Atluri ICCES Medal by the International Conference on Computational & Experimental Engineering and Sciences and the Tech Science Press to an individual who has had a significant impact on the world of engineering, the sciences, and commerce, and the well-being of the society at large as a result.

Selected publications