Punniamoorthy Ravirajan

Punniamoorthy Ravirajan, PhD(Lond), DIC has over 150 publications listed in Google Scholar with an h-index of 17 and over 2892 citations (5 papers cited >200 times; one >600 times). He has supervised 11 awarded MPhils, with 3 others in process; and received research grants as PI of over Rs 35 million by the NRC, NSF and IFS, Sweden. He is joint coordinator for a Ministry of Science, Technology and Research grant of Rs 240 million; and collaborative grants from Norway totalling Rs 426 million (including placements for MPhil/PhD students in Norwegian institutions). Prof. Ravirajan has won the Presidential Award for Scientific Publications for 5 years, the CVCD Excellence Award for the most outstanding young researcher in Physical Sciences (2006); and a SCOPUS/NSF Award for Young Scientists (2008). He has also held Royal Society and Commonwealth Fellowships in the U.K. Prof. Ravirajan’s research has resulted in a novel design for hybrid solar cells that significantly increased power conversion efficiency. Through his continuing collaboration with Imperial College London, he has made another seminal contribution in hybrid metal oxide/polymer solar cells, by replacing randomly oriented ZnO nanoparticles with ZnO nanorods perpendicular to the substrates, generating significant performance improvements. His strategy has been highly cited in indexed journals and applied to other classes of cells. Prof. Ravirajan is Senior Professor and Chair of Physics (Head/Physics: 2010-2016), and the current Dean/Faculty of Science, University of Jaffna. He has been the Director of Jaffna University’s International Collaboration Unit since 2018 and Chairman/University Research Committee (2016-2018). He has contributed to staff development activities at Jaffna University, winning three UGC grants totalling Rs 11.5 million. He was instrumental in developing a Master’s Degree programme in Clean Energy Technologies and establishing a 'Clean Energy Research Laboratory’. He was appointed to the National Research Council in 2019 and 2023.