Harish Bhaskaran
Advanced Nanoscale Engineering Group (Research group website)
Novel materials and new ways to use known materials have been key drivers of new technologies in both prehistoric and modern times. I am interested in research at the intersection of nanomaterials and nanoengineering to create new nanotechnologies. Nanotechnology is a large field but engineering devices and systems that can both advance our knowledge in this field as well as use this knowledge to be creative and innovative is what truly interests me.
I (pretend to) lead the Advanced Nanoscale Engineering Group (click link to be taken there, the information there is less verbose and more useful), which has recently focused on some key technologies:
1) Use of optoelectronic materials to create photonic brain-inspired computing and displays
2) Additive manufacturing techniques to take such photonic devices into the manufacturing realm – particularly for emerging “smart-manufacturing” initiatives where embedded intelligence is required.
3) Range of nano mechanical systems that employ novel functional materials - are there good reasons to do this and can we learn something new from doing this?
4) More recently, we are exploring the use of our photonic technologies for applications in biochemistry and diagnostics.
Our work is supported by an EPSRC Fellowship in Manufacturing and several other research grants including the concluded £3.1 million Wearable and Flexible Technologies Collaboration (WAFT), which included 15 industrial partners. Current programmes that the research group is part of include as well as the EU’s Horizon 2020 grant "Functionally scaled computing technology (FunComp)" and FET Proactive grant, "Photonic enabled Petascale in-memory computing with Femtojoule energy consumption (PHOENICS)".
Our (DPhil students and Postdoctoral Researchers) work has been featured widely over the last several years in Science, Nature, Economist, MIT Technology Review, Fortune, Wired etc. We are also active innovators, with several patents at Oxford, some of which have been commercialized via two spinout companies, viz Bodle Technologies (2015-2022) and Salience Labs (established 2020). I am a Chartered Engineer (CEng), Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (FIMechE), Senior Member of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). I am also a Royal Society Research Grants Committee Member, and serve on the steering committee of the European Phase Change and Ovonics Symposium (E\PCOS), as well as the Microsystems and Microengineering Europe (MME).
Within Oxford, I served on the University’s former Socially Responsible Investment Review Committee (SRIRC), and currently serve on the Ethical Investments Representations Review Subcommittee and the Cleanroom Working Group. I also run the Device Cleanroom Users Committee. I serve on REF Panel for MPLS division , the MPLS EPSRC IAA Steering Group and the Impact and Innovation Committee.
“STEM” subjects form just one (important) part of human endeavor; therefore I maintain a keen interest in collaborating with social sciences and humanities, and I have also have an interest in leadership studies and the contextual meaning of leadership - more on that at a future date.
See Advanced Nanoscale Engineering Group for details.
