Hi, I'm Saurav, a Graduate Research Assistant at Virginia Tech.

Saurav is a current PhD. Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant at Virginia Tech.

He completed his undergraduate in Engineering with distinction (university 9th) from the prestigious National Institute of Technology, Durgapur after qualifying in the top 1% in the extremely competitive JEE mains. During his undergrad, he actively collaborated with and was mentored by IIT Kharagpur, Tata Steel Global R&D and CSIR-CGCRI India.

His final year project in collaboration with Tata Steel and University of Cambridge was awarded the Mind Over Matter Innovation Award 2014 and selected for commercial implementation. He was also offered the prestigious IIT Kanpur SURGE Fellowship which he declined, to go to Tata steel.

For graduate studies he was offered admits to various notable schools including Brown, Boston University, UC Irvine before selecting to come to Virginia Tech under full scholarship selected for a rare direct PhD position. He worked under Professor Levon V. Asryan (Recipient of Russian State Prize in Science and Technology 2001) studying theoretical physics aspects of Double Tunneling-Injection Quantum Dot Lasers.

Saurav then moved to a more experimental track in 2018, working under Dr. Roop L. Mahajan (Bells Labs fellow and Eminent Researcher) and Dr. William Reynolds (Director NCFL) to develop the nascent field of low-cost coal-derived graphene and its applications in structures, electronics, thermal management and additive manufacturing.