Kushal was born and brought up in Bangalore, India. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology from St Joseph’s College, Bangalore in 2013, and his master’s in chemistry from Pondicherry University in 2015.  Kushal then moved to the U.S to pursue his doctoral research and received his PhD degree in Physical Chemistry in 2020 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the supervision of Prof. Mark Ediger. In his PhD, Kushal worked on the structural characterization of physical vapor-deposited (PVD) glasses of organic semiconductors. During his doctoral research, Kushal used synchrotron X-ray scattering and spectroscopy to probe interfacial molecular packing in organic semiconductor glasses. Packing at buried amorphous interfaces is vital for the performance of organic electronic devices but is extremely difficult to access; Kushal’s work established methods to probe molecular organization at buried inorganic-organic and organic-organic interfaces. For his PhD research, Kushal was awarded the K.V and Sara Reddy Award in Physical Chemistry. For his postdoc, Kushal moved to the newly formed Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering where he was advised by Prof. Paul Nealey and worked closely with the group of Prof. Juan de Pablo. In his postdoc Kushal used lithographically defined nanostructured surfaces to direct the self-assembly of photonic and charge-conducting liquid crystals. Kushal joined Rice as an assistant professor in July 2024.

Research Summary

Our research is highly interdisciplinary, and is at the intersection of physical chemistry, material science, and molecular engineering. The aim of our research is to understand and control molecular organization and dynamics in functional organic and soft materials such as 1) semiconducting organic glasses, 2) pharmaceutical solids, and 3) photonic and luminescent liquid crystals. To study molecular packing and dynamics, we use a combination of synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy and scattering, polarized optical microscopy, and optical and infrared dichroism spectroscopy. Understanding and engineering functional organic materials at the molecular level is key to improving their applicability for healthcare and sustainability applications.