I joined the CVD group at UofL in the Fall of 2000 after completing my BE in Chemical Engineering at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, India. I was a PhD student with Prof. Sunkara for 4 years. After graduating in August 2004, I joined Prof. Eray Aydil at University of California Santa Barbara as a Post doc. These 4 years spent in Louisville were the fastest and most productive years of my life so far. I worked with understanding the structures of carbon phases at nanoscale. My work started with doing Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations for understanding faceting of diamond crystals during growth. I also did experimental studies to capture diamond and diamond-like phases at nanoscale. These studies helped to understand the structure of diamond nuclei. This was accompanied by pursuing the synthesis of some unique 1-D carbon nanostructures called ‘Carbon Nanopipettes’. During my PhD, I was awarded the Grosscurth Fellowship from the Speed School, which supported my graduate studies. I was also the recipient of the Graduate Dean’s citation for students graduating in Summer 2004.
I was very lucky to have been able to acquire a diverse set of experimental and theoretical skills during my PhD, which has helped me to easily mould to any project. I owe most of my current knowledge in CVD to my mentor, Prof. Sunkara. All the students graduating from his lab have been lucky to have had a good set of skills, along with great opportunities to have interactions with researchers from all around the globe and attending and presenting at very useful conferences. The freedom he gave us to collaborate with people around us helped us mature and develop our own sense of independence in research. At the same time, he always remained approachable at any time of the day to discuss the smallest issues we had with research. The best part about the CVD group was that we all worked together as a team in terms of learning from each other; at the same time we had our own space to grow and develop our ideas independently.
Incidentally, I also just got married to another CVD-group alumni, Shashank Sharma who I met during my PhD in Louisville (adjacent in a picture of us at Kauai, Hawaii). No wonder, the days spent at the CVD group at Louisville will always be very memorable to me!
