Ramamurthy (“Rampi”) Ramprasad, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical, Materials, & Biomolecular Engineering, has been awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship. The award will enable him to conduct research at the Fritz-Haber-Institut of the famed Max Planck Society, in Berlin, Germany.
Ramprasad plans to spend a full sabbatical year at the Fritz-Haber-Institut, beginning in fall 2010. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation promotes academic cooperation between German researchers and top scientists and scholars from across the globe. The organization’s fellowships and awards allow recipients to conduct research in Germany, and also enable German scientists and scholars to carry out research with Humboldt Foundation alumni worldwide.
He and several colleagues are in the process of articulating the technological challenge that will drive their research efforts in Germany. His collaborators will include Matthias Scheffler, his German host, who directs the theory department at the Fritz-Haber-Institut; Chunguang Tang, a former graduate student who earned his Ph.D. at UConn and is now studying at the Fritz-Haber-Institut on a Max Planck Society post-doctoral fellowship; and other industrial and academic researchers in Germany and the U.S.
Named for a German Nobel laureate, the Fritz-Haber Institut is among the world’s most respected laboratories in the physical and chemical sciences.
While at the Fritz-Haber-Institut, Ramprasad’s research will focus upon understanding – at a fundamental level – why ceramic coatings used on turbine blades are so effective in protecting the blades from the extremes of temperature, pressure, and high-speed debris. Turbine blades are found in diverse applications, from jet engines to power plants.
“Jet engines, for example, are subjected to extraordinary extremes of temperatures during flight, particularly during takeoff and landing,” Ramprasad says. “In fact, they are subjected to temperatures beyond the melting point of the metal blades. Only the insulating ceramic coatings keep them intact.”
He says this is one of the cases where commercialization has outpaced science: “Outstanding coatings have been developed, but we’re not certain how they function. We want to gain an atomic-level understanding of how these coatings protect the blades. If we can understand how they work, we can improve upon them.”
Ramprasad’s research will span computational and modeling studies of the coatings, which have properties of low thermal conductivity.
Ramprasad received his Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining UConn, he was employed with Motorola’s R&D laboratories at Tempe, Ariz., as a principal staff scientist. In 2009, Ramprasad was also awarded a Max Planck Society Fellowship for Distinguished Scientists.
