Professor Subramaninan Ramakrishnan, chemical engineering faculty and researcher at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, was recently named a 3M Professor at Florida A&M University and the college.
Subramanian Ramakrishnan, faculty member at Florida A&M University (FAMU) and the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, was named a 3M Professor earlier this month. The endowed appointment recognizes Ramakrishnan’s research and academic accomplishments.
Ramakrishnan, professor of chemical engineering, studies the physics, chemistry and processing of complex fluids (colloids, proteins, polymers and other “soft materials”) with the aim of producing useful components for engineering applications and addressing the fundamental questions that arise in assembling them into useful structures. His work has applications in industries such as optoelectronics, transportation, adhesives and biomedicine.
“Dr. Ramakrishnan is an outstanding faculty member who represents excellence in research, teaching and service and brings great credit to the university and the college,” J. Murray Gibson, dean of FAMU-FSU Engineering, said. “He exemplifies the academic leadership that the 3M endowment honors.”
Ramakrishnan is the director of the Center for Complex Materials Design for Multidimensional Additive Processing (CoManD), a center funded by a $5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) grant. CoManD has been transformational for materials research at FAMU and at the college. It was recently identified as an excellent example of NSF’s impact on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by program director Claudia Rankins.
“Professor Ramakrishnan’s leadership at CoManD has created an excellent environment for recruiting under-represented doctoral students, through strengthened relationships with other HBCUs and sponsored recruiting workshops,” Bruce Locke, professor and chair, Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, said. “His enthusiasm and passion for chemical engineering inspires our students to achieve their best in research and education.”
The center has already recruited more than a dozen African American engineering doctoral students to FAMU, and its first CREST program graduate, Bobby Haney, Ph.D., recently joined Harvard as a postdoc.
In addition, Ramakrishnan has been very involved in educating and mentoring undergraduate students, and improving the undergraduate curriculum in chemical engineering. CoManD has established close collaborations with Harvard, MIT, the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army and NASA, thus enhancing the research and education at FAMU.
Ramakrishnan earned his Ph.D. in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 2001. He received FAMU’s Emerging Researcher award in 2011 and FAMU’s Research Excellence award in 2017. In 2020, he was given the prestigious Joseph Cannon Award in Chemical Engineering by the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers. He has published papers in many important high-impact publications, including Physical Review Letters, Journal of Chemical Physics, Langmuir and Macromolecules.