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Krishanu Dey, PhD

Sustainability and Energy Fellow

Sustainability and Energy Fellow

2026 Cohort

PhD program: Physics, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Fellowship mentors: Richard D. Schaller, PhD, and Mercouri G. Kanatzidis, PhD, Department of Chemistry, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Krishanu (Krish) Dey is an interdisciplinary materials scientist whose research spans functional materials, optoelectronics, and sustainable energy technologies. He joins Northwestern University from Imperial College London, where he was a postdoctoral research associate in chemical engineering, developing photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical systems for the sustainable production of fuels and commodity chemicals from renewable feedstocks. Previously, as a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford, he worked with Professor Henry Snaith on thermally evaporated halide perovskite thin films and heterostructures for next-generation perovskite light-emitting diodes. Krish completed his PhD in physics at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Sam Stranks, during which his research unraveled the unique fundamental properties of mixed lead-tin halide perovskite materials for photovoltaic and transistor applications. Before moving to the UK in 2018, he completed his M. Eng in electrical and computer engineering from the National University of Singapore and B. Tech in electronics and communication engineering from the National Institute of Technology Silchar (India). Supported by approximately £150k in research and equipment-access funding, his contributions have already been recognized with the RSC Energy Sector Best PhD Thesis Award (2023), IET Hudswell International Research Award (2022), and E-MRS Graduate Student Award (2021), among others.

Meeting global climate goals will require a dramatic expansion of clean electricity generation, with a recent study suggesting that every 15% increase in solar deployment across the United States could reduce national CO₂ emissions by more than 8 million metric tons annually. Against this backdrop, Krish’s research at Northwestern focuses on developing next-generation perovskite photovoltaics that can surpass the efficiency limits of today’s solar technologies. Under the joint mentorship of professors Mercouri Kanatzidis and Richard Schaller, his work seeks to address fundamental challenges in defect passivation, charge transport, and operational stability to enable high-performance all-perovskite multijunction solar cells capable of converting sunlight to electricity far more efficiently than conventional single-junction devices.

Such advances could substantially lower the cost of renewable electricity, increase energy generation from limited land area, and enable new opportunities in concentrator photovoltaics and lightweight, radiation-tolerant solar technologies for space applications. Through a combination of fundamental materials understanding and device engineering, his research seeks to establish perovskite multijunction photovoltaics as a transformative platform for sustainable energy generation in the decades ahead.