Postion : IAM-RE Director and Professor of Chemical Engineering
Office: Ernst Hall, Room no 314
Phone: (502) 852 1555
Email:mahendra@louisville.edu
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Mahendra Sunkara, Professor in Chemical Engineering Department, received his B.Tech, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Andhra University (India) in 1986, Clarkson University in 1988 and Case Western Reserve University in 1993, respectively. For his Ph.D., he joined Professor John C. Angus at Case Western Reserve University, a pioneer in the low pressure synthesis of diamond and related materials. In his dissertation, Sunkara developed a simple kinetic Monte-Carlo scheme for simulating the morphology of vapor grown diamond crystals and was able to contribute significantly to put forward theories on nucleation and growth mechanisms involved with low-pressure synthesis of diamond using chemical vapor deposition methods.

Dr. Sunkara joined Faraday Technology, Inc. in 1993 and worked as a Project Engineer till 1996. During this period, Dr. Sunkara received research support through SBIR program over $1.5 MM (4 SBIR Phase I, two Phase II) from NSF, DoT, EPA and U.S. Navy. These projects covered a wide-ranging application areas such as advanced coatings to prevent corrosion on rebars (DoT), electrokinetic remediation of heavy metal contaminated soils (EPA), electrochemical recovery of heavy metals from plating waste waters and corrosion monitoring within supercritical media (NSF).

Since joining UofL in 1996, Dr. Sunkara established a laboratory on advanced materials synthesis and characterization and a multi-user, comprehensive materials nanotechnology research facility. He also received external research contracts in excess of $2.5MM to support a research program involving Diamond, Gallium Nitride, Nanowires and other Nanoscale Materials. He has published over 60 articles in refereed journals and holds three U.S. Patents, three additional U.S. patents pending, and four provisional patent applications pending. Dr. Sunkara received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 1999, Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty in Engineering Award in 1999 and received the distinction of top 25 young guns in Louisville by Louisville Magazine.

Dr. Sunkara is active in AICHE, MRS and Electrochemical Society and organized various sessions at AIChE. Dr. Sunkara will be co-chairing sessions titled Chemical Vapor Deposition, Materials Issues in Nanoelectronics and Synthesis of Inorganic Nanowires and Nanotubes during 2003 and 2004 AICHE annual meetings. Dr. Sunkara is planning to organize a topical specifically focused on Nanowires at the 2005 annual meeting of AICHE to be held in Cincinnati, OH. In addition, Sunkara initiated an annual state-wide workshop on the theme of Materials Nanotechnology (http://www.kynanomat.org ) held during last week of September every year. Researchers from both industry and academia attend this workshop.

Dr. Sunkara serves as a regular reviewer to numerous journals (over 10) involved with research on advanced materials, nanomaterials and electrochemical investigations. He also serves as a reviewer and as a panelist for reviewing proposals submitted to several federal and state funding agencies.