Venkat Viswanathan

Prof. Venkat Viswanathan is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan's College of Engineering, holding joint appointments in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering. He leads the Electrochemical Energy Group, dedicated to inventing and optimizing materials, processes, and devices to accelerate the transition to sustainable transportation, aviation, chemicals, and fuels.

• Education: Ph.D. from Stanford University
• Research Interests: Electric aviation, Electric vehicles, Batteries, Scientific machine learning, Computational modeling, and Electrochemistry

The group's research combines computational/theoretical approaches with growing experimental collaborations, particularly with Prof. Jay Whitacre, integrating machine learning and automated experimentation. They prioritize open-source software development through platforms like SciFM.ai.

Scientific Awards

• MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35
• 2024 Robert Caddell Memorial Award for Research (as a team member with Archie Mingze Yao and Victor Venturi)

Prof. Viswanathan supervises doctoral students across Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, including Alex Wadell, Amal S Sebastian, Anoushka Bhutani, and Tianyi Zhang, who explore topics such as atomic modifications for Li-ion electrodes, multiscale modeling of all-solid-state batteries, and computational phase diagrams.

Labs and Community Initiatives

The Electrochemical Energy Group engages in community-building efforts such as the Battery Modeling Webinar Series (BMWS), which fosters open discussion among early-career scientists. The group's work spans atomic to national scales, aiming to enhance electrochemical systems' performance, cost, and safety while advancing scientific foundation models for molecular discovery.