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Kripa Varanasi

Contact Info

room 35-209

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

77 Massachusetts Avenue

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Administrative Contact Mayo, John 3-359 617.253.5328

Education

  • 1998

    INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS

    B.Tech.
  • 2002

    MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)

    M.S.
  • 2004

    MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)

    Ph.D.

Research Interests

Our mission is to solve important challenges in Climate, Energy, Biomedical, Water, Agriculture, Transportation, Consumer Products and other industries to usher in sustainable products and processes for societal and economic impact. Our approach lies in understanding and controlling fundamental physico-chemical interactions governing these phenomena, and accordingly engineer transformative solutions. Our group has over the years developed expertise in surface and interfacial science, thermal-fluids, electrostatics, phase transitions, electrochemistry, biomedical, and manufacturing approaches to scale the technologies we develop. We are problem solvers and are passionate about entrepreneurship and have formed several start-ups including Arnasi (formerly LiquiGlide), Infinite Cooling, Alsym Energy, AgZen, CoFlo Medical, to translate research from lab to market.

Bio

Kripa K. Varanasi is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He received his B.Tech from IIT Madras, India and his SM (ME and EECS) and Ph.D from MIT. Prior to joining MIT as a faculty member, Prof. Varanasi was a lead researcher and project leader at the GE Global Research Center. At GE he received many awards for his work including Best Patent, Best Technology Project and Leadership Award. At MIT, the focus of his work is in understanding the physico-chemical phenomena at interfaces and developing novel materials, devices, and products that can dramatically enhance performance in energy, water, agriculture, transportation, medical, and consumer devices. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and translating technologies from lab to market. He has co-founded multiple companies including LiquiGlide, Dropwise, Infinite Cooling, and Everon24. Time and Forbes Magazines have named LiquiGlide to their “Best Inventions of the Year”. His Infinite Cooling project has won first prize at DOE’s National Cleantech University Prize, first prize Rice Business Plan Competition, first prize Harvard Business School Energy & Environment Start-up, first prize at MIT-100K, first prize at MassChallenge. Prof. Varanasi has received numerous awards for his work NSF Career Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Heat Transfer Award, Boston Business Journal’s 40 under 40. ASME Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award for outstanding achievements in Mechanical Engineering, APS Milton van Dyke award, and MIT Graduate Student Council’s Frank E. Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising.

Publications

Refer to varanasi.mit.edu