Shreyas Mandre, assistant professor of engineering, is part of an international research team awarded a Young Investigator Grant by the Human Frontier Science Program. The team will receive $350,000 in each of three years to study the fundamental mechanics of the human foot. The research is led by Madhusudhan Venkadesan, a biomechanician from the National Center for Biological Sciences in India, in collaboration with Mahesh Bandi, a physicist at Japan’s Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. The researchers hope to shed light on evolution of bipedalism, a task possible only by combining the capabilities of the three team members, Mandre said. “The goal of my lab is to develop simple but quantitatively accurate descriptions of phenomena with applications to energy, environment, and biology,” he said. “We welcome interdisciplinary collaboration with other groups and actively seek talented undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral researchers.” Based in Strasbourg, France, the Human Frontier Science Program promotes basic research in the life sciences by funding researchers all over the world. This year, the organization awarded $34 million to 33 research teams that include scientists from 26 countries.