In the busy IGIT, Mahajan's mentoring matters

Life inside the Institute for Gas innovation and Technology (IGIT), which perpetually skirts the cutting edge of global decarbonization, tends to be busy.

Director Devinder Mahajan, who also heads the chemical and molecular engineering graduate program for Stony Brook University’s Materials Science & Chemical Engineering Department, keeps his foot on the gas, so to speak: Established in 2018 by National Grid and the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC), IGIT is always tracking gas-system infrastructure improvements and testing new technologies powered by low-carbon, sustainable fuels. 

With the clean energy-distribution sector growing exponentially, there are quite a few contender technologies out there. Combined with big-idea innovations conceived within Dr. Mahajan’s lab, there’s always plenty to do at IGIT.

For example, a next-gen wastewater-treatment project that uses volatile gas hydrates – a crystalline solid formed of water and gas, at once a major potential energy resource and a significant environmental risk – to purify wastewater.

Graduate student Jade Killean can tell you all about gas hydrates, and the hyperactive IGIT, and Dr. Mahajan’s merits as a mentor.

Still a month away from her master’s degree in Technological Systems Management, Killean – whose course of study concentrates on environmental and energy systems – plays a vital role in the wastewater study, leading experiments that provide critical data on the efficacy of the gas-hydrate solution.

“I am currently the lead research assistant on the wastewater-treatment project,” she notes. “I’ve had the chance to lead some undergraduate students on this project, which has given me the opportunity to further develop leadership, interpersonal and teamwork skills.”

Killean, who earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental studies at SBU, credits whatever leadership skills she has to Dr. Mahajan, a textbook leader by example.

“He hosts weekly lab-group meetings so that everyone is on the same page, gets to hear updates on each other’s research and gets to ask questions directly,” Killean says. “And he’s collaborative, in that he recruits not only chemical-engineering students but students from different backgrounds of study, like me.”

That wide range of expertise facilitates “collaborative problem-solving and the transfer of ideas,” according to the graduate student – notions Dr. Mahajan expanded when he brought a team of young SBU researchers all the way to India.

“When I first reached out to Dr. Mahajan to apply for a summer internship, he also presented me with the opportunity to study abroad with him and other SBU students in India,” Killean notes. “In India, we studied renewable energy for a sustainable future and pioneered a research experiment in geothermal energy in the Himalayas.”

As the director’s protégé, Killean has also attended big-time energy conferences and annual organizational meetings – invitations that show how much Dr. Mahajan “cares about his students’ futures and … gives us opportunities to develop our careers, whether in academia or industry.”

That value-add is important to the rookie researcher, who “aspire(s) to use the skills I have acquired … in Dr. Mahajan’s group to develop a career in industry.”

Continued research into water management, renewable energy and sustainability is also in the cards. Killean has options – and she credits both her guide and the busy, brainy AERTC facility with opening those doors.

“Working in the AERTC provides us students with the resources and opportunities we need to carry out research projects,” she says. “AERTC hosts several other centers, like the Center for Clean Water Technology and the Thermomechanical & Imaging Nanoscale Characterization Core Facility, and with those laboratories in the same building, we have the ability to work together on research projects.

“And Dr. Mahajan is a great mentor.”