Shashank Sundriyal
Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowship
CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, India
Shashank Sundriyal in his lab in India.
Shashank is a 2022-23 Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow who will be joining Drexel Materials in August 2022. The Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship Program provides opportunities for highly talented Indian faculty and researchers in the early stages of their careers to strengthen their research capacities at U.S. institutions. Shashank has received numerous prestigious awards and was also a Marie Curie Fellow.
Please describe your research.
My research proposal focuses on the development of alternative energy storage devices by employing a metal-organic framework and MXene hybrid structures as electrodes for safer and high-performance rechargeable zinc-ion batteries. Their synergistic effect can minimize the limitations of each other such as low conductivity, low surface area, restacking of 2D layers, and limited active sites for redox reactions. The work also involves the integration of anti-freezing gel electrolytes with batteries to make a device that can operate even at very low temperatures. This alternative energy storage device will find potential applications in portable electronic devices, backup power supplies and hybrid electric vehicles.
What brought you to Drexel to work on your research?
Professor Michel W Barsoum’s and Professor Yuri Gogotsi’s pioneering discovery of MXenes research pushed me to work at Drexel University with them. Therefore, in this proposal I tried to merge my expertise of metal-organic frameworks with their discovered material MXene for safer and high-performance zinc-ion batteries. I hope this will give me immense growth in my career that would help me for independent research/academic profile.
Tell us about something in your research work that you are particularly proud of/excited about.
From past 6 years, I have done a lot of work on metal-organic frameworks, biowaste derived activated carbon and different composites for supercapacitors. For my research work on clean and green energy, I have received several awards and fellowships including mainly Associate Membership of RSC, CSIR-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellowship, CSIR-Pool Scientist Grant, Prestigious Green Talent 2021 outstanding young scientist award by Federal Ministry of Education & Research of Germany, Marie-Curie Cofunded PASIFIC Postdoctoral Fellowship of Poland, and Marie-Curie (ERA) Postdoctoral Fellowship and now prestigious Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellowship upon which I really proud. In addition, I am really excited to work with my host supervisor Professor Barsoum to merge the chemistries of MOFs and MXenes for next generation energy storage devices.