iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
Indian American Ramamoorthy Ramesh, senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. He joins 118 other new members and 24 international members who will be formally inducted next April.
On top of being one of the highest honors a scientist or engineer can receive, membership to the NAS also provides a platform for advocacy and leadership. Since its creation in 1863, the NAS has served as a nonpartisan, nonprofit institution that offers science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations, a Berkeley Lab announcement said.
Ramesh is a member of the Materials Sciences Division and is currently serving as executive vice president of research Rice University, where he is also currently a Professor of Materials Science and Nanoengineering and of Physics and Astronomy. His work in the areas of complex oxide materials and their applications in electronics has been pivotal in advancing the understanding of ferroelectric and multiferroic materials—critical for developing new types of electronic and magnetic devices. His efforts to design and build chips for microelectronics out of these novel materials, using advanced nanofabrication tools, could lead to next-generation devices with greater energy efficiency.
From 2010 to 2012, Ramesh helped lead the SunShot Initiative, a national project aimed at lowering the cost of solar power to make it competitive with traditional energy inputs of the electric grid. He served as the Associate Lab Director for Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area from 2014 to 2018.
Ramesh graduated in chemistry from Madras University, got a bachelor’s degree in metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and a master’s and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from UC Berkeley. Ramesh has recently held the Purnendu Chatterjee Chair Professor in Materials Science and Physics at UC Berkeley, and is he is currently on leave from this role while at Rice.
