- narays5@rpi.edu
-
518-276-6988
- 0000-0001-6325-8736
About
Dr. Shankar Narayan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and completed his postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on interfacial science, thermal transport, phase-change phenomena, and the design of nanoengineered surfaces and materials for solar-thermal energy conversion, thermal energy storage, and electronics cooling. Dr. Narayanan has authored over 75 peer-reviewed publications and holds multiple U.S. patents related to advanced thermal systems. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the ACS Doctoral New Investigator Award (2018), NSF CAREER Award (2020), NASA Early Career Faculty Award (2021), the Class of 1951 Outstanding Teaching Award (2020), and the School of Engineering Classroom Excellence Award (2021).
Research
Thermal and Fluids Engineering, Sustainable Energy Systems, Micro and Nano-engineered Structures, Multiscale Transport Analysis, Energy Conversion and Storage
Teaching
At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Dr. Narayan has developed and taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses, including Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, Conduction Heat Transfer, Boundary Layer Theory, and Thermal and Fluids Engineering Laboratory. He emphasizes conceptual understanding by integrating fundamental principles with real-world design problems, supported by computational tools such as COMSOL Multiphysics, MATLAB, Mathematica, and Excel.
Conduction Heat Transfer
Heat Transfer
Publications
The following is a selection of recent publications in Scopus. Shankar Narayan has 83 indexed publications in the subjects of Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Materials Science.