Yes, please.

Please start by introducing your professional journey in academia

OK myself, I am Doctor Achuth Rao Kulkarni. I recently completed my tenure as NRC postdoc. At Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA.

Okay, so you just wrapped up your NRC postdoc at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. Anything else about your academic path you'd like to share—maybe your research focus or how you got into this field?

Where my research work was primarily focused on. Developing novel metal matrix. I got into NPS basically through a UH competitive fellowship program called. Nas National Academy of Sciences. I got this fellowship and my research work was supported. To ONR Office of Naval Research. Where the task was my research was to develop novel metal matrix composite coatings. By using cold spray coating technology for aerospace and naval applications.

So your work was on developing metal matrix composite coatings using cold spray for aerospace and naval use, funded through ONR and the NAS fellowship. That’s a pretty specialized area—are there any particular research outcomes or publications from this project that you’re especially proud of?

Yeah. I have uh. I have presented my research work in several conferences. UH-1 is like ICMCTF international conference on. Metallurgical coatings and thin films. Which was held in San Diego, CA. And I presented one of my research works at Texas Austin. And my research work finally led to. I don't 7 International Journal publications. And three more publications are still under review and yet to publish.

Dr., let's talk a little about teaching. What's one foundational concept in your field that you particularly enjoy explaining to students, and why do you think it's so important?

I'm comfortable in teaching Introduction to Material Science and Engineering course. Along with that, I would like to introduce a new course related to advanced surface engineering technologies. And tribology and mechanical properties of materials these courses. Very much important for an undergrad agilized. Grade student because. Whenever you are selecting a material for any structural applications. You must know the properties of material. How can you alter the properties of material? How can you alter the microstructure of material? Can you make the material hard by making any surface treatments? Or water. All the surface engineering techniques you can adopt. And how can you improve the properties of the material? So these are all very important aspects.

You mentioned wanting to introduce advanced surface engineering and tribology to undergrads, focusing on how treatments can alter material properties.

And characterization of materials is also important. And how are you going to select the material? Based on the cost, availability and properties. I'll tell them like both lab. Cases as well as real world examples for suppose. Uh, let me begin with my cold spray coating study. What we faced is initially we were trying to develop hybrid reinforcement composite coatings, uh, by using caffeine nano platelets and boron carbide as well as boron nitride nanotubes. With aluminum matrix. So these are basically aluminum? Matrix based Metal matrix Comp. Reportings when we're trying to spray it onto the aluminum and magnesium alloy substrates. We were facing the issues of delamination. And porosities. And not good addition strength of the coatings. So in order to improve the coating performance. We introduced this pre-surface treatments known as. Sandblasting and. Laser surface texturing which? Altered the surface chemistry as well as surface roughness.

Uh, we, we improved the surface. Business and ultimately eventually it led to the. Good addition properties. By good mechanical anchoring.

You ran into delamination and porosity issues with your hybrid reinforcement coatings, and addressed that by introducing sandblasting and laser surface texturing—so students really get to see how surface prep directly affects adhesion and performance. When you run this as a lab or case study,

Dr., your dissertation at IIT Indore focused on enhancing mechanical and tribological properties of aluminum alloys through alloying and laser-assisted surface modification. Can you give an example of how you’ve adapted insights from that research to make the underlying science accessible to students who are new to materials engineering?

My PhD I worked on an industrial project. Basically all of you know, like even a layman know an automobile engine.

Yeah.

You’ve clearly got hands-on experience translating surface engineering research into practical lessons. When you’re explaining laser-assisted surface modification to students who’ve never seen it before,

Okay, so you tie your PhD work to something as familiar as an automobile engine. Go on.

Yeah. In automobile engine in order to improve this oil retention property when the piston is rotating inside the cylinder block. Uh, you need oil retention property. Usually they you. They do convention. Conventional honing in order to retain the oil. And to minimize the surface roughness. Instead of this conventional warning, we have introduced a new technique called laser honing. Where will be irradiating the laser onto the cylindrical block.

In ninet. Hydrogen environment so that the nitrogen gets trapped. With the aluminum and it forms. Soft aluminum nitride layer. Like a hard aluminum nitride layer which. Solid lub.

Right, that practical link between microstructure change and real-world engine performance really helps students see the relevance of what they're learning. Now, given your work in metal matrix composite coatings and laser surface engineering,

So you introduced laser honing in a nitrogen environment to form a hard aluminum nitride layer, acting as a solid lubricant in engines. What did you find most challenging about getting that process to work reliably for industrial application?

So one of the key challenges is like. Get shape of the engine components. Uh, but uh, even we can. Do this practically for industrial applications with the robotic arm. Uh, where you can irradiate the laser with the help of. Bobo and you can use the Nitro. Environment so that, uh. You can avoid the. Conventional display. My night riding you can avoid this plasma night riding where you need vacuum number. That with laser. Honing and laser nitrating. You can do it in the open atmosphere, but the challenging time. You need to. Is the oxidation from the environment. You can do that by. Appropriate the process parameters like nitrogen gas, flow rate and laser fluids. And how much is the laser? Input energy that you are going to radiate. So by controlling these parameters we can. To this, so it is like doable at. It is scalable for the industrial applications. Hello.

Alright, Dr., shifting gears a bit — you’ve taught and designed courses on material science and surface engineering. Suppose you have to teach a large undergraduate section on mechatronics or smart vehicle technologies, but you can't rely on traditional lectures. How would you structure a session so students are actively engaged and really internalize the key concepts?

I think I can show them like real world practical applications like sensors and mechatronic applications like robotic arms, like how the robots are replacing the humans. I can give them the real world examples along with the exposure to the laboratory sessions. So that they'll get a clear idea and what they are reading and what they are learning. So that's how I'm planning to build it.

You mentioned earlier the importance of practical exposure and industry relevance. Accreditation cycles can be quite demanding—let's say you join our department and discover that outcome assessment data is inconsistent across courses. How would you approach fixing that?

I didn't get your question. Could you please repeat it?

Sure, I'll repeat the question. Accreditation cycles can be quite demanding—let's say you join our department and discover that outcome assessment data is inconsistent across courses. How would you approach fixing that?

Outcome assessment data means like. Uh, you may need of research or. Uh, you are correlating the. Theoretical courses with. Any research or? What do you mean by?

Right, let me clarify. By outcome assessment data, I mean the records we use to track whether students are actually meeting the learning objectives set for each course—things like exam results, lab performance, project outcomes, and so on. If you noticed that different courses were tracking or reporting this data in inconsistent ways, how would you go about standardizing and improving that process?

Oh, you mean standardizing this assessment data process?

Yeah, exactly—standardizing the assessment process so everyone tracks student learning outcomes the same way. You’ve clearly thought about practical lab exposure and industry alignment, but on the administrative side, how comfortable are you taking on department-level tasks like accreditation documentation, program reviews, or curriculum committee work?

Maybe we need to use some AI or machine learning based models in order to track each student. Progress.

Uh, his lab reports as well as his course related.

Huh,

Uh, his lab reports as well as his course related. Reports.

Imagine this scenario: a student formally complains that your grading was unfair, and at the same time, your department head pressures you to raise the course pass rate. How do you balance maintaining academic integrity with the institutional pressure to improve outcomes?

Got it.

No, no, not at. Yep, I got it.

Maybe I can reevaluate the papers of the students.

Alright, you’ve brought up practical applications like robotic arms and the role of automation, which ties directly to industry needs.

So you’d consider reevaluating student papers in response to concerns — but what about building connections with industry itself? Have you been involved in any projects or collaborations with companies that led to internships or job opportunities for your students?

Yeah, of course. Recently I have submitted a project in collaboration with BITS Hyderabad. To ISRO Indian space. Which organization? And we got that funding approved for nearly 32,00,000. Uh, where my students can work on these projects, uh, once I get. Yeah, once I get hired in your university. And apart from this? I have international collaborations as well. With my postdoctoral institute. NBS Naval Postgraduate School which is defense-oriented institute. Maybe I can? Focus in the near future on writing. Uh, joint projects. With this Indo US fellowship.

You mentioned earlier about guiding students on research projects and involving them in industry collaborations. Suppose a student group is struggling to connect the theory from class to what they're doing in the lab—you notice their experiments aren't matching the expected results.

So that we can. Exchange the students. The students can go and get the international export. It enters, they can see the labs and they can learn some. New technologies. Could you please repeat it?

You talked about students getting international exposure and learning new technologies through exchange programs, which is great. Just repeating my earlier question—if you notice a student group struggling to connect theory from class with their lab experiments and their results aren’t matching expectations, how would you help them bridge that gap without just giving them the answers?

Yeah, obviously like. The theory and the practical sessions are completely different because. In the theory, uh, you'll end up getting some result, whereas in practical you have a different environment, you have different process parameters to control, so based on the process parameters you get the different micro. Mechanical properties, so. For same material, if you have different process conditions you will end up getting different. Microstructure and different mechanical properties so. Tell them what is the fundamental theory. And how to alter the properties? How we can correlate the theoretical knowledge to the practical variations? Like what are all the factors that will affect? The practical conditions. So that they'll be prepared and. They don't be in a dilemma like. What am I doing?

Right, so you're explaining how theory and lab can diverge because of process parameters like microstructure and mechanical properties. That shows you emphasize helping students understand the underlying principles, not just chasing the right answer. Shifting gears a bit—when it comes to communicating complex topics in class, how do you structure your lectures and labs to keep students engaged and make sure they actually grasp the key concepts?

Yeah, if. I'm going to teach any complex subject or complex course. Uh, I'll give them like, uh. I'll show them the videos of real world. Applications.

And and how the people are going to solve those problems. And what are all the practical applications for that particular group?

So you use real-world videos to ground abstract concepts, which can help make theory more accessible for students. When it comes to evaluating students—say you’re on a committee designing final exams—how do you make sure your exam questions are fair, actually test the learning objectives, and can distinguish between different levels of student understanding?

So you’re thinking about not just the exam structure but how students will apply what they learn to real-world problems. When you’re actually designing those exam questions, how do you decide what’s a fair balance between theory and practical, hands-on problems?

Yeah, and. And and the prototype models as well.

Alright, so you include prototype models as part of the learning and evaluation process. Shifting focus a bit, have you personally handled student evaluations or exam duties—like setting, proctoring, or grading exams—and if so, what’s your approach to making sure those tasks are handled efficiently and fairly?

I don't have any personal experience at the moment. Uh, but during my UH PhD and post. I help my supervisor in grading the exam papers. Along with that, I helped him. In organizing the laboratory sessions and. I have helped several Masters, Navy students and peers in their thesis.

Okay, so you’ve pitched in with grading and helped run lab sessions, plus mentored master’s and Navy students on their theses.

And I used to take the laboratory sessions and I used to teach. Material Science. Training courses. Yeah, I used to tell them like go through the. Uh, latest literature related to the specific research topic, uh, so that you can identify what is the clear research gap and what the people are trying to do, what are all the real world problems and what we need to do new like. What is a novelty that we can implement? In order to achieve. Those problems. That's the way I used to mentor the student.

So you encourage your students to dig into the latest literature and identify research gaps, pushing them to find real-world relevance and novelty in their projects. When you’re communicating complex or abstract topics—especially in a diverse classroom—how do you adapt your teaching approach to make sure students with different backgrounds or learning speeds can all keep up?

I know, like, uh. In a classroom, you have a diversified set of students like. Uh, like a set of people have a a different capability to grasp the subject and set have a like low level of grasping capability. So by keeping this in mind. I teach them from the fundamentals, like from the basics. Not just teaching the high level subject. So I make sure that everyone gets the subject knowledge. Equally. And if they still don't get it? I spent some extra time. To give them.

Alright, so you make sure to start from the basics so everyone has a foundation, and you’re willing to spend extra time with those who need it. Dr., shifting to your research experience—can you tell me about one of your research papers published in a reputed journal, and what you think made it stand out for publication?

Or else to clarify the doubts and. I spent some extra time. That's the way. One of the researchers published in latest journal And what is the next question?

Or else to clarify the doubts and. I spent some extra time. That's the way. One of the researchers published in latest journal And what is the next question? What did you ask? Could you please repeat?

Alright, sounds like you’re ready to move on. You mentioned collaborating with industry and defense institutions for research projects. Have you had any direct experience working on industry projects or consultancy, and if so, what was your role and how did you balance academic goals with real-world deliverables?

Alright, so you’re willing to spend extra time outside of class to make sure everyone’s on the same page. Going back to your research, can you walk me through one of your recent publications—what was the main research question, what methods did you use, and what do you think made that paper strong enough to get accepted by a top journal?

Yeah, one of the major problems that was identified during my Coldplay work was, uh. This delamination and getting the pose and cracks in the. Of the coatings so in order to avoid that. We impose this functionally graded coatings based on your application. You will grade the coating layers. And each coating layer has different composition. And you will gradually change the composition in order to achieve your. Application like it is basically application oriented. This paper got published in Materials Letters Journal. Which is a high highly repeated. Journal We solve this problem by using functionally graded materials like we change the composition from aluminum. 5% micro before C2 to aluminum. 30% B 4C. And we ended up getting a thick coating with this 30%. Reinforcement Ceramic. Composition as well.

Alright, so for your Materials Letters paper, you tackled delamination and cracking by using functionally graded coatings, adjusting the composition layer by layer from aluminum with 5 percent boron carbide up to 30 percent, and that let you achieve the desired thickness and properties. What was the biggest technical challenge you ran into during that research, and how did you address it?

And in order to minimize the residual stress. Actually. We reinforced with hybrid reinforcement 1 is B4C and the other reinforcement was graphene nano platelet. The major challenge that we had with the Graphene Nano platelets during the coating was. Agglomeration of graphene nano platelets. So in order to avoid that agglomeration. We carefully control the process parameters such as like. Temperature, pressure, standoff distance and along with that. We have carefully chosen the ball milling process parameters in order to. Uniformly. Distribute this reinforcement in the aluminum matrix and in order to avoid the coal welding or agglomeration of graphene nano platelets, we properly. Ball to powder ratio and the impact force. An on-and-off time in between this. Milling so. So we ended up getting a uniformly dispersed. Graphene nano platelets in the aluminum matrix and we finally ended up getting a good coating.

Okay, so the biggest challenge with the graphene nanoplatelets was keeping them from agglomerating, and you managed that by tuning ball milling parameters and process conditions to get a uniform dispersion—definitely not trivial. Now, thinking about your industry collaborations, have you had a chance to work directly on any industry consultancy or applied projects, and if so, what was your main contribution?

Yeah, as I said earlier, uh, my PhD work was like industrial collaboration, only I worked for a vacuo industry where they have given this aluminum cylindrical block. And they asked us to improve the surface mechanical and tribological properties in order to do that. We chose this novel technique called laser nitriding along with laser honing where we parallely. Alter the. And the parallely improved the surface properties like hardness and. Tribological properties by using. By purging nitrogen gas in the laser environment. So where we used to achieve like reduced. Space roughness along with this hearts. Nitride layer over the aluminum. And, and this was one of the novel work. And where we use different nitrogen gas environments 1 is open nitrogen and other one is purging normal nitrogen gas and other one is using liquid nitrogen as nitrogen media.

Yeah, as I said earlier, uh, my PhD work was like industrial collaboration, only I worked for a vacuo industry where they have given this aluminum cylindrical block. And they asked us to improve the surface mechanical and tribological properties in order to do that. We chose this novel technique called laser nitriding along with laser honing where we parallely. Alter the. And the parallely improved the surface properties like hardness and. Tribological properties by using. By purging nitrogen gas in the laser environment. So where we used to achieve like reduced. Space roughness along with this hearts. Nitride layer over the aluminum.

Okay, so you worked with a vacuum industry partner to enhance the surface and tribological properties of an aluminum block using laser nitriding and honing, and you managed to get a harder nitride layer by purging nitrogen in the process. Dr., thinking about your overall approach to teaching, how do you balance delivering structured, well-organized lectures with encouraging interactive discussion or student questions during class?

Alright, so you developed that laser nitriding technique in direct partnership with industry and handled the process innovations yourself. Now, just to confirm,

So where did laser nitrating in three different environments and we compared the work. Yes, it was not completely related to smart manufacturing or I could say it's a kind of smart manufacturing because even my post doc I worked on cold spreading manufacturing which you could consider one of. Smart manufacturing techniques, which is completely different from. Traditional. Laser based powder. Bed fusion that we use for 3D manufacturing instead of laser. Powder bed fusion. We use cold spray 3D additive manufacturing. Smart manufacturing. Technique I would say.

So your cold spray additive manufacturing work does fall within the broader idea of smart manufacturing, even if it’s not the traditional laser-based approach. Just to clarify, your PhD itself was in a field directly related to mechatronics, smart manufacturing, smart vehicle technologies, or semiconductor manufacturing, right?

It is not completely. Falls under this category.

Okay, so your PhD isn't directly in those areas, but your postdoc work in cold spray additive manufacturing is adjacent to smart manufacturing. Just to nail down your experience with research publications, when you prepare a manuscript for a top journal, what's your process for making sure your work stands up to peer review and meets the standards for publication?

I make sure that we do prop. For material characterizations like after coating, we do software. We use sophisticated techniques such. Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy techniques in order to. Analyze the porting. And in order to. Uh, evaluate the mechanical properties. We use appropriate equipments like uh. Annotation or micro Vickers hardness and how you are evaluating the properties How you are evaluating the?

Is it up to the standards of measurements and how you are analyzing the? The data. What is your standard deviation?

Alright, so you rely on thorough material characterization with techniques like SEM and TEM, and back it up with solid mechanical testing to make sure your results are reliable before writing up the paper.

You’re asking about measurement standards and data analysis—so, for your published work, how do you ensure the data you report is statistically robust, and what methods do you use to interpret your results and present standard deviation or error?

Yes.

Right, so you confirm your data quality by checking standard deviation and following proper measurement protocols. For student evaluations, can you give me a real example of an exam or practical you designed that balanced both theoretical concepts and lab skills, and how you ensured it was fair?

I didn't get your question. Could you please repeat it?

Sure, let me repeat that for you. Can you give me a real example of an exam or practical assessment you designed that balanced both theoretical concepts and lab skills, and how you made sure it was fair to all students?

Basically, it depends on. How I teach my course during the classwork? So. If I balance like both. Theoretical teaching as well as laboratory sessions. In a parallel way so that. My exam paper I'll. Prepare accordingly so that it'll be. Specifiable for all the student.

Alright, so you base your exams on how you balance the class between theory and lab, and you design your papers to reflect that mix. Can you walk me through a time you guided a student project or research effort—what was your approach to mentoring them through the process?

Yeah, I worked with so many naval officers at NPS. Where I help them with their master. Which specifically related to cold strike coatings. One of their projects was. So related to metallization of polymers. And where we were getting so many challenges and I used to train them like. How you need to select the process parameters? How the surface can? Going to. Bit different from. Metal to metal contact and metal to polymer contact. And how you need to get the coating like. Without delamination. And what are all the? Parameters that you need to keep in mind like how you need to. Altered the self esteem.

Yeah, I worked with so many naval officers at NPS. Where I help them with their master. Which specifically related to cold strike coatings. One of their projects was. So related to metallization of polymers. And where we were getting so many challenges and I used to train them like. How you need to select the process parameters? How the surface can? Going to. Bit different from. Metal to metal contact and metal to polymer contact. And how you need to get the coating like. Without delamination. And what are all the? Parameters that you need to keep in mind like how you need to. Altered the self esteem. Like what I need to I used to guide them.

Alright, Dr., we're just about wrapped up. Is there anything you'd like to ask about the role or the team?

Alright, so you supported those naval officers through some challenging research and guided them on process parameters and material behavior, which definitely sounds hands-on. Dr., we're just about wrapped up. Is there anything you'd like to ask about the role or the team?

Yeah, I would like to know more about this role like. I heard this is assistant professor in research. But uh, what research roles that you're looking for?

Thanks for asking, Dr.

And how much is the initial research grant that? You could be providing. To start. Or to establish the laboratory. Is it the vacancies that you have is only related to smart manufacturing, semiconductors and mechatronics or you have anything relevant to metallurgy, materials engineering or it's related to my field as well?