Engineering the Future of Energy

I’m Shomik Verma, an incoming Assistant Professor at Rice University's Department of Mechanical Engineering. My research program is motivated by bringing the dirty, legacy aspects of our energy ecosystem into the 21st century. My work spans the entire energy conversion chain, from fundamental materials to device design to system techno-economics.

I'm currently a Welch Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice Chemistry, where I work on plasma and thermal systems for chemical conversion and material synthesis.

I completed my PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with Prof. Asegun Henry in the Atomistic Simulation & Energy Research Group, as a Martin Sustainability, PD Soros, and NSF GRFP Fellow. At MIT, I made contributions to the field of thermophotovoltaics (TPV), developing a techno-economic framework to guide technological development, followed by designing high-temperature emitters that maximize TPV power output, and demonstrating a next-generation power plant that uses TPV to convert light emitted from ammonia combustion into electricity.

I previously completed a 2-year Marshall Scholarship for graduate study in the UK. For the first year of my Marshall, I completed an MPhil in Materials Science at the University of Cambridge on 3D printed LSCs with Prof. Rachel Evans. For the second year, I completed another MPhil in Materials Science at Imperial College London with Prof. Aron Walsh, focusing on high-throughput virtual screening of photon conversion molecules.

Prior to this, in May 2019, I completed my undergrad at Duke University, where I studied Mechanical Engineering with minors in Energy Engineering and Mathematics. During my undergrad, I worked on hydrogen production from methane using concentrated solar power, and then worked on using this hydrogen in a fuel cell to power a prototype vehicle. The car I helped build with Duke Electric Vehicles ended up breaking the world record for vehicle fuel efficiency.

After my bachelor's degree, I spent a summer at Georgia Tech investigating the applications of concentrated solar power for electricity generation. This work was used in the design of a next-generation pilot plant through the Department of Energy.

Please feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat!