PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Dr. Roop L. Mahajan is the Lewis E. Hester Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech (VT) and Global Ambassador for VT’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS), of which he served as the first permanent executive director from 2006-2016. He concurrently also holds Thapar Chair Professor for Emerging Materials. His prior experience includes 15 years (1976-1991) at AT&T Bell Laboratories as Member Technical Staff/Research Leader/Bell Labs Fellow, and fifteen years at the University of Colorado, Boulder (1991-2006) as Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Director of an NSF Industry University Cooperative Center, and Interim Dean of the College of Engineering.
Mahajan is a prolific and outstanding researcher with a stellar record and reputation in both traditional academic pursuits and industrial research. He is co-author of an advanced text/reference book on Buoyancy Induced Flows and Transport and has to his credit over 200 archival publications, several review articles and book chapters, over 180 invited talks and paper presentations at national and international conferences and a number of patents and invention disclosures.
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Mahajan’s research can be best summarized by the following three characteristics: (i) high quality; (ii) a seamless transition from basic to applied research, and (iii) interdisciplinary. His greatest strength is as a forward-looking bold thinker, with the pulse on the latest trends in technology. He has proven to have an unerring instinct on new upcoming technologies and how to get there first, and the courage and confidence to pursue and implement his vision.
His current areas of research are in Carbonaceous Nanomaterials, Thermal Sciences, Biomedical Devices, Robust Sustainability and Humanistic Engineering. His significant contributions in these fields and passion for excellence has won him accolades from academics and practicing engineers alike, and has resulted in many awards and honors including the prestigious Bell Labs Fellow and several ASME awards including the Heat Transfer Memorial Award, Ralph Coats Roe Medal Award, and Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award. He is also the recipient of the 75th Anniversary Medal of the ASME Heat Transfer Division, Virginia Tech’s Alumni Award for Outreach Excellence in International Research and Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh’s Distinguished Alumni Award. He is an ASME Fellow and Fellow of Punjab Academy of Sciences.
Mahajan is an inspirational and effective teacher inside and outside of the classroom. He is visionary in his approach to curriculum and has been a strong advocate of integrating the societal and ethical aspects of technologies in engineering curriculum. He sets high standards of excellence for his students and motivates them to reach for the top.
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Mahajan is a leader par excellence. At all the three major institutions he has worked over the past 40 years (Bell labs, CU-Boulder and Virginia Tech), he founded or redirected existing organizations with a clear vision to be among the top three in the nation. He is an internationalist and humanist at heart who is deeply aware of the true calling of his profession to “harness the basic principles of science and engineering to do something useful for society”. Through his own research spanning a period of four decades, he has demonstrated the abiding power of this principle by taking his innovations from the laboratory to the larger society in a seamless manner.
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Mahajan received a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University and his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, India. His education has throughout been marked by distinction and superior academic performance.
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
Dr. Seul-Yi Lee is currently serving as Research Associate at the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) and the Mechanical Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. She received her PhD degree in the Department of Chemistry from Inha University, South Korea. Her prior research is in nanomaterials including porous silica and metal-organic frameworks. Her area of current expertise is in the synthesis and modification of various carbonaceous materials including graphene, graphite, carbon nanotubes, activated carbon, carbon fibers, carbon molecular sieves, etc.
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At GrapheneX, Seul-Yi Lee has developed the one-pot process for mass production of graphene derived from coal. Her current work is focussed on the use of coal-derived graphene and it derivatives in thermal management, development of sensors, structural applications. Through this she intends to contribute towards meeting the grand challenges in the areas of energy and sustainability for the future.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Saurav Kar is a current PhD. Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant at Virginia Tech. Saurav completed his undergraduate in Engineering with distinction (university 9th) from the prestigious National Institute of Technology, Durgapur after qualifying in the top 1% in the extremely competitive JEE mains. During his undergrad, he actively collaborated with and was mentored by IIT Kharagpur, Tata Steel Global R&D and CSIR-CGCRI India. His final year project in collaboration with Tata Steel and University of Cambridge was awarded the Mind Over Matter Innovation Award 2014 and selected for commercial implementation. He was also offered the prestigious IIT Kanpur SURGE Fellowship which he declined, to go to Tata steel. For graduate studies he was offered admits to various notable schools including Brown, Boston University, UC Irvine before selecting to come to Virginia Tech under full scholarship selected for a rare direct PhD position. He worked under Professor Levon V. Asryan (Recipient of Russian State Prize in Science and Technology 2001) studying theoretical physics aspects of Double Tunneling-Injection Quantum Dot Lasers. Saurav then moved to a more experimental track in 2018, working under Dr. Roop L. Mahajan (Bells Labs fellow and Eminent Researcher) and Dr. William Reynolds (Director NCFL) to develop the nascent field of low-cost coal-derived graphene and its applications in structures, electronics, thermal management and additive manufacturing.
Bharath Bharadwaj is a graduate research student at GrapheneX, currently pursuing his M.S in Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg. His research interests are electronics cooling, thermal management and heat transfer. Currently, he is working on understanding viability of coal-derived graphene-based Thermal Interface Materials (TIMs) for cooling applications. Prior to Virginia Tech, Bharath obtained his B.S from PES University in India and briefly worked as a visiting research scholar on surface modifications for enhanced heat transfer at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. He intends to contribute to technologies aligned with thermal management, energy, and sustainability in the near future.
Danny Jankus is a Mechanical Engineer with interests in the biomedical field. He graduated with his BS in Engineering Science and Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 2017, He is currently working in Chantilly, Virginia in data center design and critical systems cooling while pursuing his MS in Mechanical Engineering (Thesis) at Virginia Tech. At GrapheneX he is currently working on Coal-Derived Graphene Oxide Coatings for Antimicrobial and Osteogenic Enhancement of Titanium Implants.
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