Ram Seshadri

Ram Seshadri is an American materials scientist, chemist and academic. He is the associate dean for research in the College of Engineering as well as distinguished professor in the Materials Department and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and the Fred and Linda R. Wudl Professor of Materials Science at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ram Seshadri
Born	India
Citizenship	American
Occupation(s)	Materials scientist and academic
Academic background
Alma mater	Delhi University Indian Institute of Science
Thesis	Investigations on Fullerenes, Carbon Nanotubes, Onions and Small Gold Particles (1995)
Academic work
Institutions	University of California, Santa Barbara

Seshadri is known for his contributions to understanding the relationships between structure, composition, and properties in functional inorganic materials. His research also encompasses materials for energy conversion and storage, such as Li-ion and related battery materials, magnetocaloric materials, and hybrid halide optoelectronic materials. Furthermore, he is the recipient of 2004 National Science Foundation Career Award, and the 2005 Exxon Mobil Solid State Chemistry Faculty Fellowship of the American Chemical Society. Furthermore, he has published over 400 scientific research publications in leading academic journals.

Seshadri has served on the editorial boards of numerous academic journals and is the editor of the journal Annual Review of Materials Research.

Academic background

Seshadri completed his Bachelor's in Chemistry from St. Stephen's College at Delhi University in 1989. Later, he earned his M.S. in chemistry, followed by a Ph.D. under the supervision of professor C. N. R. Rao in Solid State Chemistry, from the Indian Institute of Science, in 1995.

Career

Seshadri began his academic career in 1999 as an assistant professor in the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit at the Indian Institute of Chemistry. From 2002 to 2006, he was an assistant professor in the Materials Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2006, he was promoted to associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, serving until 2008. He then became a professor in the Materials Department and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the same institution. Furthermore, he is a fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society and the Neutron Scattering Society of America. Since 2020, he has served as a distinguished professor in the Materials Department and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, as well as the associate dean for research in the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Research

Seshadri research is multi-faceted. In 2013, he co-authored a paper on phosphor materials for solid-state white lighting, focusing on Ce³⁺ and Eu²⁺ doped materials, their excitation and reemission properties, and guidelines for developing new host materials. That same year, he worked with to optimize Ce³⁺ phosphors for high-brightness LEDs. They used the Debye temperature and band gap of host materials to assess structural rigidity and efficiency, proposing a sorting diagram for identifying suitable hosts and addressing related challenges. In 2014, Seshadri investigated the superior thermal stability and luminescence efficiency of intermediate compositions of Sr_xBa_2–xSiO₄ phosphors. He attributed these properties to optimal cation bonding and lattice rigidity, based on experimental and theoretical analyses.

Seshadri has also researched the behavior of compounds with lone pair ions and developed guidelines for determining when these lone pairs influence the crystal chemistry of the compounds. In 2003, he collaborated with others to us density functional theory to explore lone pair behavior and material instabilities in IV-VI chalcogenides, revealing that anion 𝑝 states played a significant role in lone pair localization and that these materials exhibited a balance between structural distortions and metallic tendencies, affecting their dielectric properties and phonon modes. Through his 2016 study, he examined how the lone pair electrons of Sn2+ in CsSnBr3 influenced its structural and optical properties, revealing temperature-dependent distortions and transitions between different crystal structures. Furthermore, in 2023, he examined how lone pairs of electrons influence the electronic structure and properties of crystalline solids, highlighting their role in various materials and their potential as a design element for tuning material functions.

Seshadri has also conducted research on the rapid screening of magnetocaloric materials and photovoltaics, and has made significant contributions to the fields of frustrated magnetism and magnetoelectric multiferroics. In this regard, his 2014 study explored how Mn₃O₄ exhibited phase coexistence and lattice strain below 42 K due to magnetic ordering, with a nearly equal presence of tetragonal and orthorhombic phases. This study suggested that such phase coexistence might be common in other magnetic spinels at low temperatures. Later in 2017, Seshadri introduced a computational method to predict the magnetocaloric effect of materials using the magnetic deformation ΣM, which was validated experimentally and used to identify promising new compounds for magnetic refrigeration. More recently in 2019, he evaluated around 33,000 inorganic compounds for their potential as photovoltaic materials, identified about 200 high-performing candidates with promising efficiencies and carrier properties, and provided detailed data for further research.

Awards and honors

• 2004 – Career Award, National Science Foundation
• 2005 – ExxonMobil Solid State Chemistry Faculty Fellowship, American Chemical Society
• 2015 – Silver Medal, Chemical Research Society of India
• 2018 – Silver Medal, Materials Research Society of India

Selected articles

• Seshadri, R., & Hill, N. A. (2001). Visualizing the role of Bi 6s “lone pairs” in the off-center distortion in ferromagnetic BiMnO3. Chemistry of materials, 13(9), 2892–2899.
• Lawes, G., Risbud, A. S., Ramirez, A. P., & Seshadri, R. (2005). Absence of ferromagnetism in Co and Mn substituted polycrystalline ZnO. Physical Review B, 71(4), 045201. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.71.045201
• Gaultois, M. W., Sparks, T. D., Borg, C. K. H., Seshadri, R., Bonificio, W. D., & Clarke, D. R. (2013). A data-driven review of thermoelectric materials: Performance and resource considerations. Chemistry of Materials, 25(15), 2911–2920. https://doi.org/10.1021/cm400893e
• Ortiz, B. R., Teicher, S. M. L., Hu, Y., Zuo, J. L., Sarte, P. M., Schueller, E. C., Krogstad, M., Rosenkranz, S., Osborn, R., Seshadri, R., Balents, L., He, J., & Wilson, S. D. (2020). CsV3Sb5: A Z2 topological kagome metal with a superconducting ground state. Physical Review Letters, 125(24), 247002. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.247002
• George, N. C., Denault, K. A., & Seshadri, R. (2013). Phosphors for solid-state white lighting. Annual Review of Materials Research, 43(1), 481–501.