Ravi is a research engineer in the Building Energy Science Group at NREL. His work is focused on advanced energy research, including thermal energy conversion, thermal energy storage, building energy management, thermal diodes/rectifiers/switches, and solid-state heat pump technologies based on caloric effects.

Ravi is an established researcher in the field of thermal energy conversion and storage. He is a recipient of the prestigious Institute Silver Medal award from IIT Roorkee, as well as a Pratt fellowship and an Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science doctoral scholarship from Virginia Tech. He has published more than 25 peer-reviewed papers and two textbooks, which have been cited nearly 400 times. His works on thermoelectric and thermomagnetic energy conversion are published in many high-impact journals, including in Energy & Environmental Science (impact factor 33) and Nature Communications (impact factor 12). He is also the reviewer for more than 15 international journals and the guest editor of Entropy.

Prior to joining NREL, Ravi worked for Nestlé and Schlumberger. At Schlumberger, he was a sustaining mechanical engineer for drilling and measurement tools and led a team of five mechanical designers.

Research Interests

Thermal-fluid sciences

Energy conversion

Building energy management

Multiphysics modeling

Thermal diodes/rectifiers/switches

Phase change materials

Caloric effects: thermoelectric/pyroelectric/thermomagnetic/thermoelastic

Energy harvesting

Waste energy recovery

Education

Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech

M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech

B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)

Featured Work

Journal Articles

Ultra-high performance wearable thermoelectric coolers with less materials, Nature communications (2019)

Energy scavenging from ultra-low temperature gradients, Energy & Environmental Science (2019)

Shape memory alloy engine for high efficiency low-temperature gradient thermal to electrical conversion, Applied Energy (2019)

Self-Powered Temperature-Mapping Sensors Based on Thermo-Magneto-Electric Generator, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2018)

A review on design and performance of thermomagnetic devices, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2018)

Low-grade waste heat recovery using the reverse magnetocaloric effect, Sustainable Energy & Fuels (2017)

Books

Wind energy harvesting: micro-to small-scale turbines. De Gruyter Textbook Series. (2017) (ISBN: 1614515654, 9781614515654)

Energy harvesting: materials, physics, and system design with examples. DEStech Publications, Inc. (2019) (ISBN: 1605951226, 9781605951225)

Book chapter: Harvesting thermal energy with ferroelectric materials, Elsevier (Under preparation)