Bio

Mayank Sabharwal holds a B.E. in Chemical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science - Pilani, India. After his bachelor's degree, Mayank worked at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development in India for 3 years during which he worked on several projects including estimation of kinetic parameters for exhaust treatment catalysts, numerical modeling of humidifier systems for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), reconstruction and characterization of cathode catalyst layers used in PEMFCs. During this time, he worked in close collaboration (both on-site and off-site) with Daimler in Germany and Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation Corporation (AFCC) in Canada. 

Next, he earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta in Canada under the supervision of Dr. Marc Secanell. His PhD thesis focused on understanding the effect of the intrinsic morphology on the performance of the fuel cell (FC) porous media as a means to design functionally optimized porous media which could improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of the system. After completing his PhD, he joined Dr. Felix Buchi's group in Paul Scherrer Institute as a postdoctoral researcher where he used operando X-ray tomography to analyze the water dynamics during the sub-zero operation of PEMFCs. Mayank is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Adam Weber's group working on the numerical modeling of electrochemical systems, such as PEMFCs and water electrolyzers, and X-ray tomography of titanium- and carbon-based porous transport layers. 

Mayank's research interests are in the microstructural analysis of porous media used for electrochemical energy devices. He aims to combine numerical modeling with image-based characterization to identify the key porous media morphological parameters affecting the performance of the energy systems and then use topological optimization to design functionally optimized porous media. 

Scholar page here