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Ram Devanathan, PhD
Director, Energy Processes and Materials Division
Ram Devanathan, PhD
Director, Energy Processes and Materials Division
Biography
The first Bronze Age person to mix copper and tin had no idea that alloys would one day be the building materials for nuclear reactors. Inside the reactors, materials face high heat, stress, caustic chemical attack, and a constant bombardment by energetic particles. Materials used in power plants must last 50-years or more in such extreme environments without cracking or failing. For more than 30-years, computational materials scientist Ram Devanathan has examined materials at the atomic level to find out how to make them last and to predict when they might fail.
While Devanathan has advanced molecular and computer modeling to learn about materials in extreme environments, he also knows there is a trove of information out there already. He recently started using the power of data science to scour the web looking for data that he can then use to apply more powerful computational analysis to materials development.
Devanathan also explores a variety of materials. For example, in less extreme situations, he is studying how water degrades the strength of adhesives used in vehicles by weakening internal chemical bonds. He is also using machine learning to understand structural changes in alloys and predict their strength under different processing conditions.
When someone tells you Devanathan wrote the handbook on materials modeling, believe them. He wrote the nuclear materials chapter of the 4,900-page book. He has also been invited to write reviews on how membrane materials act like sieves at the atomic scale. He has chaired multiple national conferences, is a fellow of the American Chemical Society and the American Ceramic Society (ACerS), and he also earned the ACerS Richard M. Fulrath award and an Outstanding Mentor Award from the U.S. Department of Energy.