Mr. S. Muthukrishnan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, where his doctoral studies are supported by a fellowship from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India. Since beginning his research in 2022, his work has focused on leveraging metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to design sustainable and efficient solutions for real-world engineering challenges. His research also extends to biomedical applications. His findings have been presented at national and international conferences, as well as published in high-impact peer-reviewed international journals.
Muthukrishnan completed his BS in chemical engineering with a minor in chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal. While interning at IISc Bangalore, he developed particle-tracking code to extract trajectories from live video feeds, allowing him to study their kinetics under UV light. This experience inspired his current focus on coding and simulations.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellow, Muthukrishnan is investigating chemical modifications to CALF-20, a major MOF for CO2 capture. His research aims to enhance its CO2 capture capacity in the presence of moisture, a critical challenge for CO2 capture in thermal power plants. He is advancing his expertise in developing precise machine learning-based interatomic potentials (MLIP) to simulate and design optimized CALF-20 variants. He will evaluate these designs through molecular simulations, using the developed MLIPs, to determine their industrial applicability.