Ajay Jagadale, a former research scholar at Kettering University, earned a prestigious fellowship through the Indian government to join the faculty at Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy (SASTRA).

Jagadale spent a year from October 2016 through September 2017 at Kettering with Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty member Dr. Xuan Zhou conducting research on lithium ion batteries and supercapacitors and prepared novel nanostructured materials for energy storage application. Their work was published in Scientific Reports, an open-access journal from the publishers of Nature.

“It was great experience to work at Kettering. I had a well-equipped laboratory with the availability of all sophisticated instruments like XRD, SEM, TEM, XPS at the campus,” he said. “I could work well because of those facilities and amazing people around.”

In addition to the research, Jagadale taught labs in the Physics department and helped Zhou supervise undergraduate and graduate students.

“That was fantastic. We finished a lot of work when he was here,” Zhou said.

While at Kettering, Jagadale applied for the fellowship, which Zhou described as an excellent opportunity. Jagadale learned in February he was awarded an Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) fellowship from the Indian Department of Science and Technology, which aims to attract talented faculty in science fields. The INSPIRE faculty scheme provides opportunities for researchers age 27 to 32 to become science and technology leaders. The fellowship gives Jagadale an annual research grant and competitive salary for five years. His experience at Kettering helped him earn the prized fellowship.

Jagadale joined SASTRA University, an undergraduate and graduate engineering school, and said he hopes to become an independent investigator and study on materials for energy storage and conversion. Specifically, his research will focus on the fabrication and performance evaluation of high performance energy storage devices such as supercapacitors, batteries and hybrid capacitors.

“I will be implementing simple, cost-effective and environment-friendly methods for the preparation of nanostructured materials,” he said.

He also may teach a master’s physics course next semester.

Zhou hopes to continue to conduct research with Jagadale in a joint effort between the two universities, something he said they’ve been discussing.
 

“I’m looking forward to working together,” he said.