Indian Materials Researcher Bags Prestigious Award for Research on Green Hydrogen

Dr Reshma Rao, Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Engineering, Department of Materials, has won the prestigious Clara Immerwahr Award 2023 for her research into renewable energy for green hydrogen.

The award identifies female scientists in the nascent stage of their careers and committed to promoting equity and excellence in catalysis research.

The Research Paper 

In her research paper, Dr Rao looks at producing green hydrogen with the use of renewable energy by way of water electrolysis.

In order to make this possible, Dr Rao proposes the fusion of state-of-the-art fabrication techniques along with time-resolved optical spectroscopy with X-ray and vibrational spectroscopy measurements.  This will enable one to recognize the molecular processes that regulate the rate of reaction at these interfaces.

With this study as the atomic principle, Dr Rao hopes to come up with design descriptors that pave the way for more active catalytic interfaces. With further such analyses, Dr Rao may make significant contribution to finding the solution to accelerating the production of green hydrogen at terawatt level. The augmentation of green hydrogen will scale it up as a viable, clean source of energy on a similar scale to today’s natural gas industry.

Dr Rao shared after winning the award, “At this stage of my career, the Clara Immerwahr Award offers an unparalleled opportunity to develop new collaborations with researchers and shape my independent research trajectory.”