Background

Education

Purdue University, Ph.D. Chemical Engineering (2016 – Present)
Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, B.E. Chemical Engineering (2012 - 2016)

Experience

• Dow Chemical Company (Lake Jackson, TX), Research and Development Intern (2020)
• Black & Veatch, Process Engineering Intern (2015)
• Abihinandan Rasayan, Research & Development Intern (2014)
• Institute of Chemical Technology, Design and Technical Head (2014)
• Hetero Drugs, Research & Development intern (2013)

Awards

• Bill Murray CISTAR Fellowship (2019-2020)
• Ratan Tata Scholarship (awarded consecutively from 2013 to 2016)
• Scholarship for Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) (2012)

Project Description

My research focuses on investigating catalyst morphology and functioning alongside modeling reaction pathways for energy-critical reactions. I have been fortunate to work closely with experimentalist especially at the Purdue Catalysis Center, and wide-ranging computational scientists, to develop data-driven insights using quantum-chemical calculations, further augmented by machine-learning.

Currently, I am part of a team investigating new avenues to develop sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel resources for meeting future energy demands. We are working on developing deep-learning based methods to enable realistic description of catalyst surface and devise better sampling strategies to probe near-infinite combinatorial search space of possible candidates.

In addition, I am part of a team developing a free, web-based tool for evaluating the hazards and safety involved in a university-scale laboratory. This effort is supported by CISTAR consortium and jointly supervised by Purdue Process Safety and Assurance Center (P2SAC)

Recent Publications

• Purdy, S. C.*, Ghanekar, P.* et al. Origin of Electronic Modification of Platinum in a Pt₃V Alloy and Its Consequences for Propane Dehydrogenation Catalysis. ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 3, 1410–1422 (2020)
• Ghanekar, P. et al. Catalysis at Metal/Oxide Interfaces: Density Functional Theory and Microkinetic Modeling of Water Gas Shift at Pt/MgO Boundaries. Top. Catal. (2020).

* These authors contributed equally to this work