Research Vision

I design defect-engineered perovskite electrocatalysts and translate them into industrial-scale green-hydrogen electrolyzers — bridging atomic-scale materials science with the deployment realities of the energy transition.

The decarbonisation of heavy industry depends on green hydrogen produced by water electrolysis powered by renewable electricity. Today that hydrogen is too expensive, largely because the electrocatalysts driving the oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions rely on scarce precious metals and lose activity at industrial scale. My research attacks this bottleneck from both ends at once — the atomic scale where catalytic activity is born, and the plant floor where it must survive. The framework below follows the three axes on which such work is evaluated: Excellence, Impact, and Implementation.

01 · Excellence — the science

The perovskite oxide family (ABO₃) is uniquely tunable: substitute the A- or B-site cation, or engineer oxygen vacancies, and its catalytic behaviour shifts predictably. My doctoral and postdoctoral work established that imperfection is a design tool — that deliberately introduced defects can out-perform the pristine lattice. Highlights of this contribution:

• Defect engineering in K-substituted LaMnO₃ — a bifunctional oxygen catalyst stable beyond 1000 charge–discharge cycles in zinc–air batteries (first/corresponding author, ACS Appl. Energy Mater.).
• Spin-selective catalysis — chiral Ni–Au systems that exploit the CISS effect to raise hydrogen-evolution efficiency by ~10%, opening a physics-driven route to more efficient electrolysis (Weizmann Institute).
• Low-temperature synthesis of metastable phases — hydrothermal routes at 200–240 °C that stabilise perovskite phases normally requiring >1000 °C calcination, preserving the nanoscale surface area that catalysis demands.

This body of work spans 11 peer-reviewed publications in journals including J. Mater. Chem. A, ACS Applied Energy Materials, and Nanoscale, supported by deep hands-on mastery of electron microscopy (FEG-TEM), X-ray diffraction with Rietveld refinement, XPS, and the full suite of electrochemical methods.

02 · Impact — why it matters

Green hydrogen sits at the centre of the EU Green Deal and REPowerEU agendas and of India's National Green Hydrogen Mission. The scientific barrier to both is the same: electrolysers that are cheap, durable, and built from earth-abundant elements. My current role as Scientist-B at BPCL Corporate R&D (CRDC) places that barrier directly in front of me:

• Leading development of a commercial-scale alkaline water electrolyser — advancing OER/HER and AOR/HER electrocatalyst systems from milligram discovery toward industrial deployment.
• Exploring electrochemical H₂S valorisation — turning a refinery waste stream into a lower-energy anodic alternative to oxygen evolution.
• Developing retardant catalyst materials for a ceramic hydrogen burner — closing the loop on safe hydrogen combustion.

Few materials scientists work simultaneously at the fundamental and the industrial ends of this problem. That dual vantage — knowing which laboratory results actually survive scale-up — is the impact I bring to any collaboration or fellowship.

03 · Implementation — how I deliver it

My method is a repeatable pipeline from atom to device: a soft-chemistry synthesis platform that tunes defects by design, a full characterisation stack that verifies structure–property links, and an industrial validation loop that tests candidates against real feedstocks and duty cycles. Each stage feeds the next, so promising chemistry is filtered early for scalability rather than late.

Mobility — three research cultures

My trajectory has crossed continents and sectors by design: a Ph.D. at IIT Bombay (fundamental materials chemistry), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel (spin-selective electrocatalysis), and now industrial R&D at BPCL, India (deployment at scale). This international and intersectoral mobility is not incidental — it is precisely the perspective that lets me move a result from a clean bench to a plant floor, and it is the perspective I would extend within a European host through an MSCA or Humboldt fellowship.