New Faculty Member
Dr. Ramki Kalyanaraman
Dr. Ramki Kalyanaraman is ready to demonstrate the power of two. The new joint associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) is excited about the opportunity to increase multi-disciplinary research projects in both academic units.
“I would like to make this joint position a paradigm for future hires by being highly successful as a scientist and educator. Specifically, I want to clearly demonstrate through research and the training of our next generation of engineers and scientists that combining fundamentals from these two fields can provide novel materials solutions,” Ramki said.
Ramki grew up in India, where his mother was an educator and his father was a pilot. He was intrigued by the technical aspects of his father’s job, and his mother, a voracious reader, made sure that Ramki and his brother had access to all types of books at a very young age. Ramki particularly remembers Jules Verne’s’ science fiction classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a book that initiated his interest in understanding how things work.
Ramki received his M.Sc.and M.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur and Kanpur, respectively. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1998 from North Carolina State University. He was previously an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.
Ramki became interested in joining the University of Tennessee-Knoxville faculty after learning about UT’s renewed emphasis on materials science and sustainable energy. The leadership of the CBE department, with support from the UT administration, has clearly indicated that the department is being positioned to lead in cutting-edge research for future energy needs. The long-term success in solving these problems will require close interactions between the development of new materials and cost-effective processing. I believe that a strong interaction between MSE and CBE is essential for this success. Since my background in materials science and my interest in renewable energy coincides with this work, I am very excited to be a part of this initiative,” Ramki commented. Advances in materials will require input from all forms of knowledge, Ramki added, and inter-disciplinary research is the best pathway.
Currently, he is focused on the science of pattern formation and self-organization for the creation of nanoscale materials. He hopes to take his conclusions and apply them toward new materials for energy harvesting, information processing, and sensing.
In addition to his research efforts, Ramki also enjoys his teaching responsibilities. “I have a very friendly and open style of interacting with students, and my teaching method is to create an environment in which all students feel excited, responsible, and most importantly, engaged in classroom activities,” he said.
Ramki and his wife, Veena, who also has a Ph.D. in engineering, are enjoying their new life in Knoxville with their son, Rohan, who is a year old.
Ramki hopes he won’t remain the only joint faculty member between the two departments for much longer. “I would love to see more joint faculty hires in the future,” he said. “We also need to look at more joint graduate research in the next few years. Natural phenomena do not distinguish between different disciplines, so why should our man-made endeavors be any different?”