Suresh Baskaran
Director of Research Partnerships
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Suresh Baskaran is the director of Research Partnerships at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) where he is responsible for partnership programs with academic institutions, including joint appointments, collaborative graduate programs, and joint institutes. Prior to this role, he held a series of management positions at PNNL, including chief science and technology officer for the Energy and Environment Directorate, manager for energy efficiency, transportation and renewable energy research programs, product line manager for materials and manufacturing, and technical group manager for materials structure and performance.
As a staff scientist, Baskaran conducted research in new materials for automotive, fuel cell, and microelectronic applications. He is the co-author of over 50 papers and 10 patents, and a co-recipient of an R&D 100 Award for an automotive emissions control technology, a PNNL Director’s Award of Excellence for best research group, and awards from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences for significant implications of DOE research. He has been part of numerous collaborations with industry, one of which both developed and moved into full-scale manufacturing new spark plug resistors. Baskaran is a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, and a Fellow of the Oppenheimer Science and Energy Leadership Program.
Baskaran has served or is currently serving on the advisory boards for the Washington State Academy of Sciences, the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University, the Joint Center for Deployment and Research in Earth-Abundant Materials in Washington State, the DOE’s Critical Materials Institute, and the University of California Riverside Materials Science and Engineering program. He earned his materials degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India (undergraduate), Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (master’s), and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (doctoral).
