New faculty spotlight: Praneeth Kandlakunta
Eleven new faculty members start their careers in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the 2022-2023 academic year. One of these new faculty is Praneeth Kandlakunta, who will be an Assistant Research Professor beginning autumn semester 2022.
Kandlakunta is from Hyderabad, a city in south-central India. As a kid and high school student, he was always fascinated by the science behind various physical objects around him.
“It felt magical to me how the physics at a microscopic scale influences the phenomena happening at a macroscopic level,” Kandlakunta said. “I did not just want to understand all these things, but I wanted to explore further, question, discover, and create. So, I thought, only an engineering career would help to satisfy my curiosity as it is a creative profession.”
To follow this career path, he attended Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani for his undergraduate degree. From there, Kandlakunta attended graduate school at Ohio State where he received both his M.S. and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering.
After graduating, Kandlakunta spent some time in industry before he rediscovered his passion for academic research. Following his passions, he joined as a postdoc in the radiation oncology department at Washington University School of Medicine.
After a few years there, realized that he was getting confined to medical physics, and to expand, he wanted to pursue research in the much broader area of nuclear engineering, which brought him back to Ohio State.
“Ohio State was then a natural choice, given the wide scope and array of research and collaborative opportunities available here,” he said. “I feel fortunate to have come back to Ohio State and work in the same lab that I graduated from and contribute to the university’s research output. Moreover, I like the university and the city of Columbus, which always feel like a home away from home.”
His research interests have been built on the foundations of radiation physics and applied nuclear science with his focus on the applications of nuclear instrumentation and radiation detection in healthcare, nuclear energy, homeland security.
“My research is in the national interests and finding significance in all these areas given their national importance and contributions to healthcare, energy security, and homeland security,” he said. “My goal is to build an independent research program and perform cutting-edge research, while solving problems of national importance and public significance.”
Kandlakunta hopes to use his time at Ohio State to write more research proposals, build professional network, collaborate with other faculty as well as other institutions on research projects and proposals, conduct quality research, publish research in good journals, serve the research community, mentor students, and contribute to achieving the university’s missions and goals in whatever way he can.
He said this about what it means to be in this position:
“I am in a better place to advance my career, independently pursue my research goals and research interests, and mentor students, thereby contributing to my professional growth and the university’s research output. This position offers me several opportunities for my professional development, to establish my presence and provide service to national and international research and engineering communities,” he said. “I must be more responsible while conducting research and representing the university at national/international venues and be accommodative of students’ needs. It also means that I can better contribute to the vision, values, and the overall mission of OSU to advance diversity, equity, and inclusive excellence.”
