Akash Raman, born on September 24, 1996, in Chennai, India, has been fueled by curiosity from a young age. His interest in science blossomed through everyday observations of the mechanics of the physical world. His personal experiences have fueled his motivation to improve global access to clean energy.
During a six-week field internship with the Rural Technology Action Group at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Akash worked in a small island town in southern India where he conducted a socio-techno-economic analysis of decentralized energy generation systems. This experience highlighted the ongoing struggle for access to clean energy and water in the developing world, sparking Akash's determination to bring engineering solutions to such communities.
Akash earned his bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from SASTRA University, Thanjavur, India. He furthered his education as a student research scholar in the Multifunctional Material Systems Group at New York University, where he focused on his bachelor's thesis, titled ``Hydrogel-based photocatalytic reactors for light-driven water treatment". Subsequently, he gained valuable experience working at the Polymer Engineering and Colloidal Sciences Lab at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras on an industry-funded project investigating wax-wall interactions in petroleum pipelines from a flow assurance perspective.
In August 2019, Akash embarked on his PhD journey, joining the Mesoscale Chemical Systems (MCS) group as a candidate under the supervision of Prof. Dr. ir. David Fernandez Rivas and Prof. Dr. Han Gardeniers. This project, part of the Netherlands Centre for Multiscale Catalytic Energy Conversion (MCEC), aimed at advancing the understanding of hydrogen bubble generation and transport in electrochemical systems. During his PhD candidacy, Akash took the lead on a successful NWO Take-off Phase 1 grant proposal with David and Dr. Arturo Susarrey-Arce in line with his interest in research valorization.
On 16 February 2024, Akash successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Bubbles and Membranes: Electrolysis at the mesoscale.
Organisations
Research profiles
Continuous sensing and flow with bubbles
The production of solar fuels, among which hydrogen gas, has gained much attention in the last decade. However, the promised ideal of powering disparate devices using sunlight with zero-emissions still faces scientific and technological challenges. Even with the recent development of new materials and device architectures, there is a knowledge gap that needs to be covered on the role of H2 (and O2) bubble generation and transport, specifically in continuous flow systems.
To achieve an efficient fuel production, it is not sufficient to locally control where gas bubbles are formed in stationary conditions. Hence, this project is aimed at gaining new fundamental insight in two challenging directions: (i) the processes and parameters associated with hydrogen bubble generation and transport under continuous flow conditions in novel and smart electrode designs, (ii) uncover new analytical concepts to measure dynamic physicochemical changes in the vicinity of bubble evolution sites. Both challenges have in common an unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution that is in high demand for designing and testing the solar fuel generators of the future.
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