Venkatesan Venkata Krishnan

Biography

Dr. Venkatesan Venkata Krishnan (Venkat) got his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Connecticut, in the US, in 1996, after obtaining his Bachelor’s degree in the same subject from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D), INDIA, in 1988. Subsequently he worked as Postdoctoral Fellow/ Associate at the Universities of Southern California and Pennsylvania, and at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering (New Jersey). Venkat left for India in 2004, working at IIT Delhi as Assistant Professor, followed by a stint as Principal Engineer at Bloom Energy India (subsidiary of Bloom Energy Corp, Sunnyvale, CA) in Mumbai, and at Non-Ferrous Materials Technology Development Centre in Hyderabad, before finally moving to Teesside University in February 2016. Venkat’s experience has straddled the academic domain, industrial R & D and product development, in areas of Chemical Engineering viz., Catalysis and Reaction Engineering, in Solid State Electrochemistry (primarily Solid Oxide Fuel Cells), in Process Design and in Ceramics processing. As a former academic at IIT Delhi (2004-10), he taught Chemical Process Technology (in essence, Chemical Process Principles), Process Engineering, Reaction Engineering, Petroleum Refinery Operations, Heterogeneous Catalysis, Fluid/ Fluid-Particle Mechanics /Heat Transfer Laboratory, and a course in building and installing experimental rigs, whose objectives were to get students involved in hands-on lab work as part of their engineering skill development. He also supervised the doctoral dissertation of 3 PhD students (one student in full, and two in part), with funded research in catalysis and fuel cells.

Research Interest

Venkat’s interests are primarily in the domains of Heterogeneous Catalysis, Solid State Electrochemical devices and Chemical Process Design and Development, with a research philosophy that seeks not only to investigate reactions on surfaces on a fundamental level, but also to design processes that are energy efficient and environmentally friendly.