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Student Spotlight: Deepak Rajagopal
Student Spotlight Directory
From left: a nursery of Jatropha saplings, model farm of Jatropha; pods of oil seeds.
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| Deepak stays on top of oil seeds. |
"Seeds for Fuel?"
Deepak Rajagopal is a PhD candidate in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG). His research interests lie in analyzing the economic, environmental and social impacts associated with bio-based substitutes to fossil fuels like biodiesel and ethanol.
For his dissertation, he is studying the adoption of new varieties of oil seed producing trees and crops like Pongamia Pinnata, Jatropha Curcas, Simarouba and Castor in India. He believes the most exciting aspects of these new types of crops are that unlike current sources such as corn, sugarcane or soy, they are non-intensive with respect to inputs to cultivation and can be grown on marginal lands without adversely affecting food production and forests.
In 2005, he received a United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and UC Berkeley Management of Technology program fellowship for conducting feasibility study of bio-diesel production from such sources in India.
He is also closely working with an NGO in India called Sustainable Transformation of Rural Areas (SuTRA- http://www.sustainabletransformation.com/) on grassroots initiatives with regard to biofuels in India. But he also believes that there is not enough land available to meet today's entire demand for transportation fuels using today's crops and technologies. If cars become more efficient, people drive less and the yield of biofuel per hectare all improve vastly, it might be possible.
Prior to beginning his PhD at ERG, Deepak worked for three years at United Technologies Research Center (a part of United Technologies Corporation), at Hartford, Connecticut. There he worked on computer-aided design, structural analysis and optimization of technologies for combined heating, cooling and power like gas turbines, micro-turbines, reciprocating engines, fuel cells and absorption chillers. He has also been consultant to the City of Santa Barbara on generation of electricity from municipal solid waste and agricultural residues.
Deepak holds an MS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Maryland, and a B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India. Following his PhD, Deepak intends to continue to conduct policy relevant research pertaining to the use of energy and natural resources for economic development.
Below, rainfed plantation of simarouba on degraded soils at University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, India.
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