Rahul Shevate, Ph.D.

Rahul was born and raised in Pune and stayed there until completion of his Master’s studies. For his Master’s thesis, he worked at Center for Materials for Electronic Technology (C-MET). Following a little less than two years at National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) working on gas separation membranes, Rahul joined Bloom Energy India. Here, Rahul worked on developing high temperature stable gas separation membrane and characterization techniques for ceramics and solid-oxide fuel cell components and published 1 U.S patent. Rahul went to the KAUST for his Ph.D. in 2014 and worked with Prof. Klaus-Viktor Peinemann where he studied di-block copolymer derived isoporous membranes. During his Ph.D. studies, Rahul worked on various projects involving inversing the stimuli responsive behavior of isoporous membrane, membrane-based protein separation from mixtures with close molecular weight proteins, antifouling mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) for protein separation with high selectivities, and demonstrating for first time the application of isoporous membranes for rapid humidity sensing. After Ph.D., in 2019, Rahul joined Prof. Shaffer’s lab as a post-doctoral fellow at University of Houston, USA and worked on ultrathin 2D COF membranes, membrane distillation, and reverse osmosis membranes for water treatment and desalination. In 2021 Rahul joined Dr. Jeff Elam’s group in Applied Materials Division (AMD) in Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), USA and worked on developing atomic layer deposition (ALD) on polymer membranes for molecular separation applications. Rahul has published 20 papers and 3 U.S. patents from Ph.D. and post-doctoral work. 

Rahul is the recipient of the 2023 Ramanujan Fellowship award and is now working in Polymer Science and Engineering (PSE) Division at National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. His research seeks to develop membranes and processes for energy efficient molecular separations leveraging the advances at the intersection of polymer chemistry, chemical engineering and material science.