Professor Bhattacharya studies the mechanical behavior of solids, and specifically uses theory to guide the development of new materials. Current research concerns three broad areas: (i) Active materials such as shape-memory alloys, ferroelectrics and liquid crystal elastomers, (ii) Heterogeneous materials and designing unprecedented properties by exploiting heterogeneities, (iii) Coarse-grained density functional theory to understand defects in solids.