Rate My Professor S. Masilla Moses Kennedy

Dr. S. Masilla Moses Kennedy serves as Professor and Head of the Department of Physics at SSN College of Engineering. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 1995, with a thesis entitled “Thermoluminescence and other optical processes in impurity-doped alkaline earth fluorides.” Prior to that, he obtained an M.Phil. in Physics from Pondicherry University in 1988 and an M.Sc. in Physics from The American College (Autonomous), Madurai, affiliated to Madurai Kamaraj University. With 31 years of combined teaching and research experience, including 24 years of teaching and 7 years focused on luminescence research, he conducted R&D for one year at IIT Madras and served as Senior Research Fellow in a Department of Atomic Energy project on “Making and characterization of IR sensitive thin films.” His academic journey includes receiving a merit scholarship for his M.Phil., achieving a GATE 1988 score of 93.99, and securing fellowships from the Ministry of Human Resource Development for his Ph.D., comprising two years as Junior Research Fellow and three years as Senior Research Fellow.

Dr. Kennedy's research specializations encompass thermoluminescence—both fundamental aspects and applications to dosimetry—and photoluminescence, particularly the development of phosphors for white light-emitting diodes (WLED). He has authored over 18 research publications in refereed international journals and proceedings of international conferences, accumulating more than 1,250 citations on Google Scholar. As Principal Investigator, he has led projects such as the DST-SERB funded “Near UV excitable, rare earth/transition metal ions activated Ba2CaZn2Si6O17 phosphor for White Light Emitting Diode Applications” (2017-2020, Rs. 17.91 lakh), and internal SSN Trust projects including “Fabrication of Thermoluminescence (TL)/TL emission set-up for characterizing K2Ba(7-x-y)CaxSrySi16O40:Eu2+ Phosphor for TL Dosimetry Applications” (2014-2017, Rs. 5.5 lakh) and “Fabrication of a Quantum Yield setup to characterize powder phosphors” (2019-2022, Rs. 4.0 lakh). As Co-Principal Investigator, he contributed to a Naval Research Board project on sonic band gap structures (2007-2009, Rs. 13.61 lakh) and a DRDO project on high-Curie temperature piezoceramics (2019-2022, Rs. 12.297 lakh). A recognized supervisor of Anna University, Chennai, he has guided one completed Ph.D. and oversees three ongoing theses on photoluminescence studies in silicate and phosphate materials doped with transition and lanthanide metals. He initiated the Luminescence Laboratory at SSN, teaches undergraduate courses like Engineering Physics and Physics for Electronics Engineering, and holds life memberships in the Indian Society for Technical Education, Luminescence Society of India, and Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics.