About Us

About Us

Rice-IITK Collaborative center is first of its kind where Rice, a top US university, has established a physical center with a top Indian institute. It was inaugurated on 9th January 2020 when MoU for the Center was signed by Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Director, IITK, and Prof. Seiichi Matsuda, Interim Provost, Rice University, in the presence of Chief Guest IITK BoG Chairman Dr. K. Radhakrishnan and Guests of Honour SERB Secretary, Professor Sandeep Verma, and Mr. Rahul Mehta, Mehta Family Foundation in an event organized at IIT Kanpur.

It is envisaged that the Center will foster a thriving research for the development of long-term solutions to meet the ever-increasing global energy demand. Both the institutes being at the forefront of cutting-edge research in energy solutions, this Research Center is expected to facilitate deeper levels of collaborations, exchange of knowledge and perspectives, that will fertilize ground-breaking ideas between the faculty members and researchers creating a conducive environment for both the institutes to undertake grand challenges in the area of sustainable energy and environment. In its initial phase, the Center's research will focus on designing and developing materials and processes for solar photovoltaics, energy storage, alternative fuels, electrocatalysis, and water treatment and remediation. Besides, Faculty on both institutes will be involved in co-supervising graduate students, publishing high-impact research papers jointly and garnering funds from both federal agencies and industrial sponsors through collaborative research grants.

People

People

Professors-in-Charge

Dr. Ashish Garg

Center Coordintor (IITK)
[email protected]
https://sites.google.com/view/ashish-garg-iitk-group/

Dr. P.M. Ajayan

Center Coordintor (Rice)
[email protected]
https://ajayan.rice.edu/

Participating Faculty Members: IIT Kanpur

Dr. Abhishek

Aerospace Engineering
Wind Energy, Rotary Wing Aeromechanics, Hover Capable Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV)
[email protected]

Dr. Ashoke De

Aerospace Engineering
Wind Energy, CFD, Aerodynamics
[email protected]

Dr. Anand Singh

Chemistry
Energy materials development
[email protected]

Dr. Raja Angamuthu

Chemistry
Storage materials development
[email protected]

Dr. Goutam Deo

Chemical Engineering
Catalysis, carbon capture
[email protected]

Dr. Himanshu Sharma

Chemical Engineering
Carbon capture, alternative fuels
[email protected]

Dr. Jayant Singh

Chemical Engineering
Materials design, Computational Materials
[email protected]

Dr. Nitin Kaistha

Chemical Engineering
Process Control and Design, Process Engineering
[email protected]

Dr. Nishith Verma

Chemical Engineering
Catalysis, Carbon Capture, Storage
[email protected]

Dr. Raju Kumar Gupta

Chemical Engineering
Storage materials and devices, solar energy materials and devices, water remediation
[email protected]

Dr. Vishal Agarwal

Chemical Engineering
Computational Materials development
[email protected]

Dr. Anoop Singh

Industrial and Management Engineering
Energy economics
[email protected]

Dr. Ashish Garg

Material Science Engineering
Solar energy materials and devices development
[email protected]

Dr. Anandh Subramaniam

Material Science Engineering
Hydrogen energy storage and materials
[email protected]

Dr. Kanwar Singh Nalwa

Material Science Engineering
Solar energy materials and devices development, device characterization
[email protected]

Dr. Sarang Ingole

Material Science Engineering
Solar energy materials and devices development
[email protected]

Dr. Shobit Omar

Material Science Engineering
Storage and fuel-cells materials and devices development
[email protected]

Dr. Pankaj Jain

Physics
High Energy Physics
[email protected]

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Dr. Parthasarathi Sensharma

Electrical Engineering
Power Electronics for Renewable Generation
[email protected]

Dr. Sandeep Anand

Electrical Engineering
Renewable sources based DC microgrid and power electronic converters for solar PV systems
[email protected]

Dr. Saikat Chakrabarti

Electrical Engineering
Smart grid, Microgrid, Power system dynamics and stability
[email protected]

Dr. Santanu Kumar Mishra

Electrical Engineering
Power Electronics
[email protected]

Dr. Jishnu Bhattacharya

Material Science Engineering
Storage materials development, modelling
[email protected]

Dr. Sameer Khandekar

Mechanical Engineering
Phase-change heat transfer, Heat pipes, Electronics thermal management, energy systems
[email protected]

Dr. Malay K. Das

Mechanical Engineering
CH4 Recovery from gas hydrate, CO2 sequestration in Marine Sediments Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage Transport in porous media
[email protected]

Dr. Suparno Mukhopadhyay

Civil Engineering
Structural Identification and Health Monitoring, Structural Dynamics, Earthquake Engineering
[email protected]

Participating Faculty Members: Rice University

Dr. Qilin Li

Civil and Environmental Engineering
Water and wastewater treatment, membrane processes.
[email protected]

Dr. Michael Sha-Nang Wong

Chemical Engineering & Biomolecular Engineering
Heterogenous catalysis, water treatment
[email protected]

Dr. Aditya D Mohite

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Hybrid pervoskites, photovoltaics & opto electronic devices.
[email protected]

Dr. Haotian Wang

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Energy storage, catalysis, green synthesis and energy devices.
[email protected]

Dr. Rafael Verduzco

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Polymers & polymer-based photovoltaics.
[email protected]

Dr. Thomas Patrick Senftle

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Computational modeling, electronic structure, catalysis.
[email protected]

Dr. Boris I Yakobson

Material Science & Nanoengineering
Theory and modeling; structure, kinetics, and properties of low dimensional systems.
[email protected]

Dr. Ted Loch-Temzelides

Economics
Climate and Energy Economics; Sustainability and Conservation; Transportation
[email protected]

Dr. Jun Lou

Materials Science and NanoEngineering
Nanomaterial synthesis, nanomechanics and nanodevices for energy applications.
[email protected]

Dr. Ming Tang

Materials Science and NanoEngineering
Computational material science, energy storage
[email protected]

Dr. Pulickel Ajayan

Materials Science and NanoEngineering
Nanomaterials, additive manufacturing, energy storage
[email protected]

Dr. Sibani Lisa Biswal

Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Energy storage, soft materials including colloids, polymers, and surfactants.
[email protected]

Dr. Andrew Long

Physics
Theoretical cosmology, elementary particle physics, and particle astro-physics.
[email protected]

Dr. Mustafa Amin

Physics
Nonlinear dynamics of cosmological fields.
[email protected]

Dr. Paul Padley

Physics
Experimental Elementary Particle Physics
[email protected]

Dr. Satish Nagarajaiah

Civil and Mechanical Engineering
Seismic Isolation, Adaptive Stiffness Systems, System Identification with Machine Learning.
[email protected]

Research Areas

Research Areas

Solar Photovoltaics

Organic and perovskite materials
Perovskite and organic solar cell fabrication
Device modelling and characterization

Materials Modelling

Materials development for energy generation
Materials development for energy storage
Materials development for carbon capture

Water treatment and remediation

Water treatment
Water filtration and remediation

Energy Storage

Hydrogen storage
Electrical storage (batteries, supercapacitors)
Structural batteries
Thermal storage

Catalysis, Alternatives Fuels and Carbon Capture

Alternative fuels
Biofuels
Catalysis
Carbon capture

High Energy Physics

Summer Internships

Summer Internships

A limited number of paid undergraduate summer internships will be offered at an appropriate time for IITK and Rice undergraduate students to work at Rice and IITK. The selections will be based on a pre-determined selection criteria and by a committee chosen by the Professors-in-charge.

News & Events

News & Events

Center Inauguration Event



Media Coverage


Visit to Rice University (November 2019)



Seminars

Prof. P.M. Ajayan (Rice), Institute Lecture, IIT Kanpur 08 Jan 2020
Title: Nano-engineered Materials

Prof. Ashish Garg (IITK), MSNE Seminar, Rice University, 23 April 2020
Title: Exploring Room Temperature Magnetoelectric Multiferroic Materials

Dr. Ganguli Babu (Rice), Rice-IITK Collaborative Center Seminar, 21 May 2020,
Title: Materials Engineering for Advanced Energy Storage Systems and Recycling Spent Li-ion Batteries

Rice-IITK Virtual Symposium (29/10/2020-02/11/2020)

Day 1 (29 October 2020)
Title: Particle Physics (Moderator: Prof. Mustafa Amin, Rice) and Water& Environment (Moderator: Prof. Raju Gupta, IITK)

Day 2 (30 October 2020)
Title: Energy Conversion (Moderator: Prof.Ashish Garg, IITK)

Day 3 (2 November 2020)
Title: Energy Storage (Moderator: Prof. P.M. Ajayan, Rice)