Manjunath Balagopalan has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Nanophononics/Sotomayor research group since February 2025. His current research focuses on exploring lattice dynamics in advanced materials using Raman spectroscopy.

He earned his PhD from the CSIR–National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India, where he investigated multiferroic and magnetic materials, with a particular emphasis on the structural and multiferroic characterisation of BiFeO₃-based perovskite compounds. During his first postdoctoral position at IFIMUP, University of Porto, he studied the metal-insulator transition and percolation phenomena in NdNiO₃ using Raman spectroscopy. In his second postdoctoral role at NAFUMA, University of Oslo, he worked on structure–property correlations in novel organic ferroelectric materials, employing temperature-dependent single-crystal X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, and dielectric/ferroelectric measurements.