profiles

MVS Chandrashekhar joined Morgan State’s department of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) as a Professor in October 2024 with a home in the newly founded Microelectronics Education and Research Center. He was previously a tenured professor at the University of South Carolina where he taught after completing his PhD and postdoctoral position at Cornell University in 2009. Born in India, raised in Singapore and educated in the US, he has a broad understanding of energy and health challenges that various economies face. This background informs Dr. Chandrashekhar’s teaching, course development, and outreach activities, as he is committed to having Morgan students engage with cutting edge technologies in high impact application areas as a natural part of their education.

His current research interests are in codesigned ultra-wide bandgap and other extreme materials for power electronics and energy applications including switches for electric cars and next generation grid security. Materials of interest include AlGaN, SiC, cBN and diamond, with emerging substrate platforms such as ScB₂ and TaC through a high profile DoE Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) that Morgan is a key player in due to Dr. Chandrashekhar’s patent on these concepts. These materials are expected to lead to power systems much more compact and lower-cost than currently available. The same power handling capabilities could also apply to  5G communications and beyond, an area that Dr. Chandrashekhar engages with collaborators at USC and at Army Research Laboratory.

As a consequence of his teaching labs on heart rate monitoring, he has been collaborating with public health researchers on building fitness trackers for children to support clinical trials for improving child healthcare outcomes. We are currently in our 4^th year of NIH support for this collaborative work that will also feed into other new research priorities at Morgan. As it turns out, the same extreme properties that make ultra-wide bandgap materials ideal for high power applications make them ideal for low-power biomedical sensing, bringing a natural synergy to these seemingly disparate directions.

Dr. Chandrashekhar’s expertise in crystal growth, materials characterization, device design, fabrication and characterization, and eventual application to healthcare and energy has led to over 100 journal articles, with over 6000 citations (h-index=31). His research has been funded by DoD, DOE, NIH, and NSF, leading to 7 patents issued and many more pending. He has given >100 conference and invited presentations. Dr. Chandrashekhar, is co-founder of Widetronix, an energy company in the SiC WBG space, and continues to engage in commercialization efforts with startups and small businesses through Federal SBIR/STTR mechanisms as well as CHIPS act funding streams.

Google Scholar Profile:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=95JkXJUAAAAJ&hl=en

Recent Publications:

1. Hussain, K., Mamun, A., Floyd, R., Alam, M.D., Liao, M.E., Huynh, K., Wang, Y., Goorsky, M., Chandrashekhar, M.V.S., Simin, G. and Khan, A., 2023. “High figure of merit extreme bandgap Al0. 87Ga0. 13N-Al0. 64Ga0. 36N heterostructures over bulk AlN substrates.”Applied Physics Express, 16(1), p.014005
2. McLean, M.K., Weaver, R.G., Lane, A., Smith, M.T., Parker, H., Stone, B., McAninch, J., Matolak, D.W., Burkart, S., Chandrashekhar, M.V.S. and Armstrong, B., 2023. “A Sliding Scale Signal Quality Metric of Photoplethysmography Applicable to Measuring Heart Rate across Clinical Contexts with Chest Mounting as a Case Study.”Sensors, 23(7), p.3429.
3. Armstrong, B, Weaver, R.G., McAnich, J., Smith, M.T., Parker, H., Lane, A., Wang. Y., Pate. R., , M., Matolak, D., Chandrashekhar, M.V.S., “Development and Calibration of a PATCH Device for Monitoring Children’s Heart Rate and Acceleration”, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, revisions submitted (2023).
4. Mamun, A., Hussain, K., Floyd, R., Alam, M.D., Chandrashekhar, M.V.S., Simin, G. and Khan, A., 2023. “Al0. 64Ga0. 36N channel MOSHFET on single crystal bulk AlN substrate. “, Applied Physics Express, 16(6), p.061001.
5. Mollah, Shahab, Kamal Hussain, Abdullah Mamun, Md Didarul Alam, V. S. Chandrashekhar, Grigory Simin, and Asif Khan. "Threshold voltage control with high-temperature gate-oxide annealing in ultrawide bandgap AlGaN-channel MOSHFETs."Applied Physics Express 15, no. 10 (2022): 104001.
6. Alam, Md Didarul, Kamal Hussain, Shahab Mollah, Grigory Simin, Asif Khan, and V. S. Chandrashekhar. "Realization of flexible AlGaN/GaN HEMT by laser liftoff."Applied Physics Express 15, no. 7 (2022): 071011.
7. Zare, Arezoo, Mo‐Rigen He, Michael Straker, V. S. Chandrashekhar, Michael Spencer, Kevin J. Hemker, James W. McCauley, and K. T. Ramesh. "Mechanical characterization of boron carbide single crystals."Journal of the American Ceramic Society 105, no. 5 (2022): 3030-3042.
8. Mathab, Sheikh, Peker Milas, Md Jahangir Alam, V. S. Chandrashekhar, Michael G. Spencer, and Birol Ozturk. "Room Temperature RC Series Zero Phonon Line Emission from Electron Irradiated Cubic Boron Nitride." InQuantum 2.0, pp. QTu2A-26. Optica Publishing Group, 2022.
9. Milas, Peker, Sheikh Mathab, John Bishoy Sam Abraham, Jahangir Alam, V. S. Chandrashekar, Adam J. Robinson, Patrick M. Vora, Birol Ozturk, and Michael G. Spencer. "Electronic and optical characterization of bulk single crystals of cubic boron nitride (cBN)."AIP Advances 12, no. 9 (2022): 095303.