Dr. Venkatesan Venkata Krishnan

Dr. Venkatesan Venkata Krishnan (Venkat) received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Connecticut, in the US, in 1996, after obtaining his Bachelor’s degree in the same subject from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D), INDIA, in 1988. Subsequently he worked as Postdoctoral Fellow/ Associate at the Universities of Southern California and Pennsylvania, and at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering (New Jersey).

Venkat left for India in 2004, working at IIT Delhi as Assistant Professor, followed by a stint as Principal Engineer at Bloom Energy India (subsidiary of Bloom Energy Corp, Sunnyvale, CA) in Mumbai, and at Non-Ferrous Materials Technology Development Centre in Hyderabad, before finally moving to Teesside University in February 2016.

Venkat’s experience has straddled the academic domain, industrial R&D and product development, in areas of Chemical Engineering viz., Catalysis and Reaction Engineering, in Solid State Electrochemistry (primarily Solid Oxide Fuel Cells), in Process Design and in Ceramics processing. He has 2 US Patents in the area of heterogeneous catalysis and 3, in the area of hydrocarbon separations, from his work at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering.

At Teesside University, Venkat has been researching in the area of Heterogeneous Catalysis, and Electrochemistry, more specifically in the area of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Solid Oxide Electrolysers, and in Alkaline Water Electrolysis; additionally, he has funded projects in the area of Hydrogen reduction of Iron Ore, which is a critical component of industrial decarbonization targets. He is passionate about the hydrogen economy and teaches a MSc level module in that subject, which relates to the technological descriptions, and techno-economic aspects of the Hydrogen Economy.