Mahendra Sunkara

Dr. Mahendra Sunkara is the Founder and the Chief Technology Officer of Advanced Energy Materials, LLC. He pioneered several technologies for producing nanowire based materials and their use in various catalysts and batteries. Dr. Sunkara received his B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from Andhra University (India) in 1986, a M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Clarkson University in 1988, and a PhD in 1993 from Case Western Reserve University. He worked at Faraday Technology, Inc. in Dayton, OH, from 1993-1996 as a Project Engineer before joining UofL as an assistant professor in 1996. In 2013, Dr. Sunkara has been named as the Director of the Conn Center for Renewable Engineering Research. He has published over 140 articles in refereed journals, four book chapters, and was awarded over 25 U.S. patents. He co-authored a book entitled “Inorganic Nanowires: Applications, Properties and Characterization” published by CRC Press. He was awarded the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty in Engineering award in 1999 and a NSF CAREER award in 1999. In 2002, the Louisville Magazine placed him in the list of top 25 young guns in the city of Louisville. In 2009, he received the UofL President’s distinguished faculty award for research and United Phosphorus CDS Award from the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2009. He has been named as Fellow of Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation in 2017. His research work was cited about 7000 times with an h-index of 40. His work resulted in over twenty U.S patents. Prior to founding ADEM, he founded two other companies, Chemner Batteries, Ltd in India and Indacle Software, Inc in Dayton, Ohio.