Ashwin Shahani

Professor Shahani’s research interests fall at the intersection of solidification science and advanced materials characterization. The solidification and processing pathways of metals and semiconductors continue to be phenomena of great interest to scientists and engineers, involving a complex interplay of many physical effects. As such, Professor Shahani and his team work toward unravelling the fundamental processes underlying the structural transformations of crystals (both classical and quasicrystalline) during solidification and grain growth. The Shahani group employs a wide range of synchrotron- and laboratory-based methods, including X-ray tomography and diffraction, to peer into the growth dynamics of crystals in realtime. Such studies would not be possible without the great strides in data sampling and reconstruction, computer hardware and storage, and algorithms for processing large datasets in a massively parallel environment. It is anticipated that our uniquely in situ and multimodal approach will open a new paradigm in the realm of solidification and processing science.