Prof. Venkataraman Thangadurai is a newly appointed professor and Chair in Energy in the School of Chemistry, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK. He is the inaugural UK’s Faraday Institution Adjunct Professor at St Andrews. He has 30+ years of experience in solid state chemistry / materials and pioneer in the development of solid state (ceramic) electrolytes, especially, Li-stuffed garnet-type structured electrolytes, perovskite-type proton conductors and elemental metal electrodes for electrochemical energy storage and conversion applications. Prof. Thangadurai has received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1999 and subsequently, he did his PDF at the University of Kiel, Germany.
He received a PDF fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Bonn, Germany. In 2004, Prof. Thangadurai received his Habilitation degree from the University of Kiel. He is elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), Royal Society of Canada, and the Electrochemical Society, USA. He worked at the University of Calgary, Canada during 2005 to 2024. He has published more than 260 peer-reviewed papers in journals (H-index of 69). He holds 13 patent applications. He has received the Keith Laidler Award from the Canadian Chemical Society (CSC) in 2016 and Research Excellence Award in Materials Chemistry from CSC in 2021. His current research activities include the discovery of novel solid-state electrolytes, metal anodes, and mixed conducing electrodes for next generation solid state metal batteries, solid oxide fuel cells and electrolysis cells.
