Past Travel Grant Recipients
Barathkumar Baskaran
- PhD Candidate
- 2023 J-WAFS Travel Grantee
- Department of Chemical Engineering
Barathkumar Baskaran is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Co-advised by Prof. Desirée Plata and Prof. Martin Bazant, he works to design filters to electrochemically treat drinking water. His current efforts focus on N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a contaminant of concern as a disinfection by-product and as a Superfund site contaminant. He aims to design a system that is both more capable and more energy-efficient than current approaches to treat NDMA.
He believes that effective environmental solutions are designed by considering approaches from diverse fields. He is a trainee under the MIT Superfund Research Program which brings together researchers in multiple areas such as toxicology, environmental engineering, and chemistry to develop a holistic understanding of NDMA’s impacts and potential remediation approaches.
Outside of his own work in the lab, his career in research began through undergraduate research in biochemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. As such, he has particularly enjoyed the ability to mentor undergraduates through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).