Hari Ramachandran

I grew up in Chennai and graduated from IITM in 2020 with a dual degree in materials and nanotechnology and came to Stanford, where I am pursuing my PhD in materials science and engineering. My research focuses on developing eco-friendly battery materials for lithium ion batteries that use iron instead of cobalt or nickel, for applications in electric vehicles. In addition to my work at Stanford, I also work at the SLAC and Lawrence Berkeley National labs where I use the synchrotron facilities. I am also a part of the Knight-Hennessy fellowship at Stanford, and am the second member of the program from IITM. During my undergrad, I was part of two startups aimed at improving waste management practices in Chennai.

I started learning mridangam from Shri. Arjun Ganesh in 2015 and continued learning through my time in IITM and Stanford. I’ve been performing in concerts since 2017. My favorite performance was when I opened for Smt. Nityashree Mahadevan for Classical Night at Saarang 2019. Before this, I spent 8 years learning the veena and singing.

One of my fondest memories of IITM was of the special breakfast that the Classical arts club provided for Tyagaraja aaradhanas in CLT. A lot of my classmates with no interest in carnatic music would attend just for the pongal vadai.