About

M. S. Ramachandra Rao [Mamidanna Sri Ramachandra Rao] is an Institute Chair Professor/Prof. R. Srinivasan Chair Professor and Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He received the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship in 1999. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP), JSPS Fellow, IOP editorial board member and Section Editor of Quantum Materials and Interfaces of the Journal of Physics D. Applied Physics (JPhysD) until 2018.

After graduating with M.Sc. (Physics) and Ph.D. (Experimental Condensed Matter Physics) degrees from IIT Kharagpur, Prof. MSR Rao was a Research Scientist at the Solid State Physics laboratories at CNRS, Bellevue Labs, France, and a Visiting Fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bombay before joining the Physics Department of IIT Madras as an Assistant Professor in 1995. He was an Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) fellow (Germany); JSPS fellow and JST fellow (Japan); Visiting faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park from 2002-2004 (USA). He has been a Visiting Faculty in the ERASMUS-MUNDUS Master’s program (MaMaSELF; Masters in Materials using Large Scale Facilities) since 2005 (MaMaSELF program is jointly organised by Universities/Institutes in France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy) and because of his teaching and long-standing collaborative initiatives, IIT Madras is a non-European partner Institute of the program. He was also an adjunct faculty of Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT), Japan.

Prof. Rao has supervised 45 Ph.D. students, and guided about 100 undergraduate and postgraduate students; published 350 research papers in peer-reviewed journals. With his passion for teaching, Prof. Rao has taught about 15 different courses in the past 3 decades to undergraduate, postgraduate and Ph.D. students. He also teaches in Europe.

He has 25 patents and 5 technology transfers. His group’s work on diamond coatings fetched them the 1st prize in a national-level competition (Dare-to-dream) initiated by the Prime Minister of India in 2019.

Prof. MSR Rao's laboratories are located in the Materials Science Research Centre (MSRC) and in the last 3 decades, he has established 4 major centres at IIT Madras, 1. Nano Functional Materials Technology Centre (NFMTC), 2. DST-Solar Energy Harnessing Centre (DSEHC), 3. Quantum Centre of Excellence for Diamond and Emergent Materials (QuCenDiEM) and InCent-LGD (India Centre for Lab-grown Diamond). He has immensely contributed to the fields of high temperature superconductivity, manganites and magnetic tunnel junctions, doping studies in wide bandgap metal-oxides, p-type ZnO, correlated oxides, and spin transport in iridates and cobaltates. His group's work on oxide electronic materials is highly commendable.

Prof. Rao has developed many technologies with his innovative ideas in the area of diamond coatings. His diamond coating work has won awards and accolades. Prof. Rao has a start-up in IIT Madras Research Park that is based on diamond coating technologies that he group has developed for various applications. On the Physics front, his group has realised stable superconductivity in boron-doped diamond which is considered as a new innovation wherein the granular boron doped diamond (BDD) superconductor yields extremely high microwave kinetic inductance which can be used in quantum circuits requiring high kinetic inductance granular superconductors.

In 2023, his group received a big grant from the MoCI, Government of India (grant announcement was made in the parliament session by the Finance Minister) to establish a lab-grown diamond centre at IIT Madras. The name of research centre is India Centre for Lab Grown Diamond [InCent-LGD] and it is located in the IITM Research Park. InCent-LGD research group s all geared up for developing indigenous equipment (MPCVD and HPHT) and processes to produce and explore diamonds not only for gems but also for next-generation semiconductor and electronic applications (heat-spreaders, Quantum devices, sensors, etc.).