ARI staff are very pleased to welcome our Interim Director, Professor Mohan Sankaran, who also holds a faculty position in the Grainger Engineering department of Nuclear, Plasma & Radiological Engineering (NPRE). When asked about what drew him to ARI, Prof. Sankaran said, “I am very excited to be joining ARI as the Interim Director. ARI is such a unique enterprise on our campus. I have already had the opportunity to collaborate with some of the staff at ARI as a faculty, and now I hope to get to know all of ARI.”
Prof. Sankaran is originally from Northern California and did all his education there, receiving his undergraduate degree at UCLA and then his Ph.D. at Caltech. Prof. Sankaran moved to the Midwest in 2005 when he started his independent academic career with his first faculty position at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. He was a faculty member there for close to 15 years before moving to UIUC about four years ago. Prof. Sankaran’s research interests are centered around low-temperature, atmospheric-pressure plasmas for the manufacturing of materials and chemicals.
Prof. Sankaran has received several honors for his research, including the NSF Career Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the AVS Peter Mark Memorial Award. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology.
“I have been through a lot of changes recently, including my move to ARI, but it has been a blessing – the changes have forced me to get out of my comfort zone, meet new people, and remember what it’s like to learn again. I look forward to this chance to work with ARI, and help ARI continue to have an impact on our university’s research footprint,” Prof. Sankaran said.