Navneet Kumar is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore). He is currently investigating the role of phase change (through evaporation) in limiting the capillary rise in porous systems. Accordingly, the classical Young-Laplace equation must be modified to account for the evaporation process. This research has implications in understanding the heat load versus cooling performance of wicks in the cooling devices, especially in understanding the phenomenon of ‘dry-out’ in the wicks. Prior to this, during PhD (at IISc Bangalore), he explored, in great detail, the process of evaporation from various surfaces including bare water and porous systems. His contribution is significant towards understanding the physics of evaporation from porous systems such as soils. Some of the systems he used were first-of-a-kind and unexplored; these include closely packed rods / capillaries and stack of vertical plates. His research works are now being referred by others in modelling the porous systems and also to obtain the sites of evaporation using the novel fluorescein dye deposits method. He holds a dual degree (B.Tech and M.Tech, 5 year programme) in Mechanical engineering from IIT (BHU) Varanasi.