Ananth received his B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 2013 and his Master's in Chemical Engineering Practice and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015 and 2019, respectively. Subsequently, Ananth conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University before joining IISc as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering in August 2020. Since September 2025, Ananth is an Associate Professor at IISc.
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Kousika completed her Master's and PhD in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from IIT Madras. She has expertise in using atomistic simulations for solving defect energetics and dynamics-related problems in compositionally complex ceramics for energy technologies. Kousika's current research interest includes force-field development to understand the interactions between 2D membranes and external media such as water.
Abhijit received his B. Tech. and M. Tech. degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tezpur University, and a Ph.D. degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. After, he joined the Department of Chemistry, University of Antwerp, Belgium, as a postdoctoral research scholar. His research expertise includes nanofluidic transport and two-dimensional (2D) membrane materials. Currently, he is working on the development of quantum accurate machine learning interatomic potentials for performing large-scale atomistic simulations on 2D materials (e.g., graphene, graphene oxide) and water.
Manas received his B.Sc. (Honors) and M.Sc. degrees in Physics from the University of Delhi, and a PhD (summa cum laude) in Physics from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. His PhD research focused on density functional theory-based embedding for molecular and periodic systems. Currently, he is working on the development of neural-network potentials for molybdenum deposition, using extensive first-principles calculations, and employing these potentials in molecular simulations to understand the effect of process conditions on the deposition outcome. In his free time, Manas enjoys making YouTube tutorials, writing blogs, and developing apps/libraries.
Aditya received his B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Hamirpur and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Following his Ph.D., he continued his research at IIT Kanpur as a postdoctoral research scholar under the FARE Fellowship. He has expertise in applying density functional theory (DFT) simulations to investigate dopants in zeolites and molten catalysts for various energy-related applications. Currently, he is investigating the growth of low-dimensional materials (LDMs), such as MoS2, using machine-learning interatomic potentials.
Shivam Chaturvedi is a Ph.D. candidate in the group, working at the intersection of catalysis, computational chemistry, and machine learning. He uses density functional theory (DFT), microkinetic modeling (MKM), and ML to uncover the atomic-level mechanisms governing catalytic reactions, with a focus on electrochemical CO₂ reduction and the design of next-generation catalysts for sustainable chemical processes. He holds a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, and is broadly interested in combining physics-based models with data-driven methods to accelerate materials discovery.
Pasyanthi completed her B.E. in Chemical Engineering from B.I.T. Mesra, Ranchi and her M. Tech from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), Surathkal. During her Masters, Pasyanthi worked on synthesizing electrolyte materials for solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOEC). For her PhD, she will be working on modelling nanoscale transport phenomena in 2D materials for membrane separation processes.
Manasi Lavhekar completed her B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune and M.Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Madras. During her master’s, she worked on designing a portable kiln to produce charcoal from wood biomass through pyrolysis using CFD in ANSYS Fluent. Currently, she is working on reinforcement learning for nanopore design in 2D materials. Besides academic pursuits, Manasi enjoys travelling, trekking, reading books, and painting.
Kashish obtained the degrees of B.Sc (Hons.) in Physics from the Banaras Hindu University and M.Sc Physics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Kashish is a joint IISc-University of Manchester (UoM) PhD student co-advised with Prof. Rahul Raveendran Nair from UoM. She will be working on combined theoretical and experimental investigation of 2D material membranes for separation applications.
Samir completed his B.Tech and M.Tech dual degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela in 2023. His Master's research was focused on the design of a microbial fuel cell (MFC) and the analysis of the effect of environmental conditions and different parameters on its performance. Samir is co-advised by Profs. Sudeep Punnathanam and Ananth Govind Rajan for his doctoral work, which is geared towards the modeling and simulations of electrical double layers for supercapacitor applications. His hobbies include writing, swimming, and philosophical reading.
Anusha Tripathi completed her BTech in Chemical Engineering from Ambedkar Institute of Technology, Kanpur and her MTech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), working with Prof. Ananth as a Shell Fellow. Her doctoral research is focused on reduced-order modeling, quantum-mechanical simulations, and experimental testing of water electrolyzers. In addition to her academic pursuits, Anusha enjoys dancing, singing, poetry writing, and recitation.
Keerthi Bali completed her BSc in Physics from an Andhra University-affiliated college and her MSc in Physics from Sri Venkateswara University. With a background in coding, she joined the PhD program at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), co-advised by Prof. Ananth Govind Rajan (Department of Chemical Engineering) and Prof. Phani Motamarri (Department of Computational and Data Sciences). Her doctoral research focuses on developing novel computational methods for quantum modeling of materials in the exascale era, with applications to electrocatalysis. Outside of research, Keerthi enjoys sketching and playing badminton.
Ani Poulose E completed his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Government Engineering College Kozhikode under the University of Calicut and his M.Tech in Computer Aided Process Design from the same institution under APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University. His academic work includes catalyst development for transesterification, rotary vacuum dryer design at HEMRL Pune, pesticide residue analysis in collaboration with Kozhikode Corporation, and biodrying of municipal solid waste for sustainable waste management.
Avijit completed his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, in 2025. During his undergraduate days, he worked as an IASc-INSA-NASI Summer Research Fellow at the CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML), Jamshedpur, gaining experience in synthesizing nanostructured electrocatalysts. For his master's project at IISc, he will explore catalyst and reaction mechanism discovery using machine learning and microkinetic modeling. Apart from academics, Avijit enjoys reading nonfiction, listening to songs and reciting Bengali poetry (with a special fondness for Tagore), and taking random long walks across the IISc campus!
Subash completed his Integrated M.Sc. in Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry, IIT Kharagpur. He is currently an M.Tech (Research) student in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His research focuses on combined experimental and theoretical investigations of the oxygen evolution reaction on Fe-doped nickel oxyhydroxide catalysts.
Shriyans Thakur completed his bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, majoring in Chemical Engineering. He is currently pursuing his master's degree from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. For his research project here at IISC, he shall explore the possible applications of machine learning models in accelerating the computational modelling of thin nanoscale quantum materials. Apart from academics, he also enjoys reading a lot of stuff and quite introspection whilst being on long walks.
Arkadip completed his Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2026. He is currently pursuing an MTech (Research) in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science. For his research project at IISc, he will focus on the thermodynamic modeling of propellants, applying machine learning, statistical mechanics, and first-principles mathematical derivations to complex chemical systems. Apart from academics, Arkadip enjoys watching and playing football, and exploring movies from almost all parts of the world.
Ananya completed her B.E. in Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani, Goa Campus. Currently, she is working on quantum machine learning models for predicting materials properties from the Matbench benchmark suite, including metallicity, band gap prediction and, glass-forming ability. Her work develops hybrid quantum-classical models such as variational quantum circuits, quantum graph neural networks and quantum-feature augmented boosted trees, and compares them against classical baselines. Apart from academics, she enjoys singing Carnatic music and playing the violin.
Sai Charan is pursuing his B.Tech. in Mathematics and Computing at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. An AI enthusiast, he has worked on generative AI and agentic AI solutions, spanning development and application of AI across domains, including a spatial transcriptomics research internship at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia. Currently, he is developing LLM-based solutions for CVD synthesis recipes of 2D materials, working under the joint supervision of Prof. Ananth Govind Rajan and Prof. Chiranjib Bhattacharyya, aiming to create AI agents that assist experimentalists in materials characterization and synthesis optimization.