Rate My Professor Mainak Majumder

Professor Mainak Majumder holds the position of Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering at Monash University. He obtained his BTech in Ceramic Engineering (first class with honors) from Calcutta University in 1999, MS in Ceramic Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology-Banaras Hindu University in 2001, and PhD in Materials Engineering (with a minor in Chemical Engineering) from the University of Kentucky in 2007, where his thesis focused on molecular transport properties through carbon nanotube membranes. Majumder's professional career encompasses roles such as Staff Scientist at the Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute in Kolkata, India (2001-2003), Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Rice University's Richard Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology (2008-2010), and successive appointments at Monash University starting in 2010 as Lecturer (2010-2011), Senior Lecturer (2012-2015), Associate Professor from April 2015, and Professor. He directs the ARC Research Hub for Advanced Manufacturing with 2D Materials (AM2D), previously served as Hub Deputy Director for the ARC Research Hub for Graphene Enabled Multifunctional Coatings, and was a founding board-of-directors member of Ionic Industries, an Australian public company commercializing graphene-based products.

Mainak Majumder's research specializes in applying fundamentals of materials science, notably carbon nanostructures including graphene and carbon nanotubes, to multidisciplinary areas such as separation engineering, electrochemical energy storage, nanofluidics, electrochemistry, and membrane separations. He leads the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Laboratory (NSEL) at Monash University and has secured continuous Australian Research Council (ARC) funding, including the pioneering LP11 grant—the first establishing a deep university-industry symbiosis on graphene—LP14, and IH16 for the ARC Graphene Hub. Key publications include 'Enhanced flow in carbon nanotubes' (Nature, 2005; 2464 citations), 'Fabrication of carbon nanorods and graphene nanoribbons from a metal–organic framework' (Nature Chemistry, 2016; 1158 citations), 'Large-area graphene-based nanofiltration membranes by shear alignment of discotic nematic liquid crystals of graphene oxide' (Nature Communications, 2016; 788 citations), and 'Protecting copper from electrochemical degradation by graphene coating' (Carbon, 2012; 594 citations). His scholarship exceeds 10,000 citations on Google Scholar. Honors encompass the Gold Medal as top MS student at IIT-BHU (2001), ARC Linkage grants as principal chief investigator, appointment to the editorial board of Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering (2016), selection into Monash Researcher Accelerator Program (2012), and over 20 invited international talks across the US, China, UK, Portugal, Australia, and India. Recent grants include projects on graphene oxide composites, solar-thermal desalination, and 2D materials synthesis (2024-2028).