Nanomaterials expert Nikhil Koratkar, the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Professor of Engineering in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, has been named a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The organization recognized Koratkar for his “exceptional achievement in the science and technology of one-dimensional (carbon nanotubes) and two-dimensional (graphene) nanomaterials, leading to important breakthroughs in nanotechnology, energy, and sustainability.”
ASME is devoted to using engineering to improve the quality of life worldwide. Its members provide expertise to meet diverse global challenges and help shape government policy. The ASME fellow grade, which recognizes exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession, is bestowed on less than 3 percent of over 125,000 members.
“Being elected a fellow of ASME is a wonderful recognition of Professor Koratkar’s outstanding research, which represents a creative blend of fundamentals of advanced materials with high impact applications,” said Shekhar Garde, dean of the School of Engineering. “Nikhil continues to be a leader in his field, and differentiates himself from his peers by his unconventional thinking and extraordinary intuition. His work is harnessing modern micro and nanoscale materials science for important applications in energy and sustainability. We congratulate him on this special honor.”
Koratkar’s research is positioned at the intersections of nanotechnology, energy, and sustainability. His research focuses on the synthesis, characterization, and application of nanoscale materials, such as graphene, phosphorene, carbon nanotubes, and transition metal dichalcogenides, as well as metal and silicon nanostructures. He is studying the fundamental mechanical, electrical, thermal, magnetic, and optical properties of these one- and two-dimensional materials and developing a variety of composites, coatings, and device applications using these low-dimensional materials.
Koratkar has published over 150 archival journal papers, including several in Nature series journals. His publications have received over 9,800 citations. His work in nano-structured materials for lithium-ion batteries has resulted in a startup company (Ener-Mat Technologies), which is aimed at commercializing graphene electrodes for next-generation energy storage solutions. Among other honors, Koratkar won a 2004 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the Electrochemical Society’s SES Young Investigator Award in 2009, and the ASME’s Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award in 2015. Koratkar has served as an editor of the Elsevier journal Carbon since 2010.