Bala Ramachandran

Biography

Dr. Ramachandran received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Kansas State University in 1987. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Texas Institute for Theoretical Chemistry (Mentor: Prof. Robert E. Wyatt) from 1987-89 at which point he joined the faculty of Louisiana Tech University as an Assistant Professor in Chemistry. He holds the Hazel Stewart Garner Professorship in Chemistry, endowed by the Garner family and the Louisiana Board of Regents. He is also the Executive Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering and Science at Louisiana Tech. Ramachandran’s current research deals with first principles density functional theory calculations to study electrode materials for lithium ion batteries. His research role in CIMM is to investigate the properties of metal/ceramic interfaces and computations related to the development of new force fields for simulating metal and alloy systems.

Research Interest

My research interests are in the general area of computational chemistry and computational materials science. We are currently engaged in the study of small to medium metal, metal oxide, and alloy clusters and the study of anode materials for lithium ion batteries. This work was started as part of the Louisiana Alliance for Simulation-Guided Materials Applications (LA-SiGMA), a five year (2010-2015) $20M project funded by the National Science Foundation (EPS-1003897) and continues under the umbrella of the Consortium for Innovation in Manufacturing and Materials (CIMM), also a five year (2015-2020) $20M project funded by the National Science Foundation (OIA-1541079). All of this work tends to be intensely computational in nature, and requires the use of high-performance computing platforms such as those provided by the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative.