Berkeley Lab researcher Ramamoorthy Ramesh elected to the National Academy of Sciences

iNDICA NEWS DESK-

Indian-American Ramamoorthy Ramesh, senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. He joins 118 other new members and 24 international members who will be formally inducted next April.

In addition to being one of the highest honors a scientist or engineer can receive, membership in the NAS also provides a platform for advocacy and leadership. Since its founding in 1863, the NAS has served as a nonpartisan, nonprofit institution that provides science, engineering and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations, according to an announcement from Berkeley Lab.

Ramesh is a member of the Materials Sciences Division and is currently executive vice president of Research Rice University, where he is also currently a professor of Materials Science and Nanoengineering and Physics and Astronomy. His work on complex oxide materials and their applications in electronics has been critical in advancing the understanding of ferroelectric and multiferroic materials, critical to the development of new types of electronic and magnetic devices. Its efforts to design and build chips for microelectronics from these new materials, using advanced nanofabrication tools, could lead to next-generation devices with greater energy efficiency.

From 2010 to 2012, Ramesh helped lead the SunShot Initiative, a national project aimed at lowering the cost of solar energy to make it competitive with traditional energy inputs from the electric grid. From 2014 to 2018, he served as Associate Lab Director for the Energy Technologies Area at Berkeley Lab.

Ramesh studied chemistry at Madras University, received a bachelor’s degree in metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and a master’s and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from UC Berkeley. Ramesh recently held the Purnendu Chatterjee Chair Professor in Materials Science and Physics at UC Berkeley, and is currently on leave from this position at Rice.