Staff - Suresh C. Pillai (Acting Centre Director & Senior R&D Manager)

Dr. Suresh C. Pillai obtained his PhD in the area of Materials Science/Nanotechnology from Trinity College, The University of Dublin, Ireland and then performed a postdoctoral research at the Department of Materials Science, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, California-91125, USA. Upon completion of this appointment he returned to Trinity College, Dublin as a Research Fellow before joining CREST as a senior scientist in April 2004. Dr. Pillai has chaired Nanomaterials sessions of two international conferences, acted as a technical expert evaluator for the European Commission’s Framework programme (FP6) proposals and has worked as a panel member for Enterprise Ireland’s commercialization (PoC phase) projects. He is one of the two Irish management committee members (and national delegate) in the FP6-COST 540 network (PHONASUM- supported by European Commission). Dr. Pillai is a technical referee for more than ten science and technology journals and is a member of the Materials Research Society (USA) and Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society (UK). He has published more than twenty scientific articles in leading peer reviewed journals, has presented in more than twenty international conferences and has delivered ten national/international invited talks.

His research interests are in the areas of Nanotechnology, Semiconductors, Photocatalysis and Materials for Electronic Applications.

Specialities

• Expertise in the design and synthesis of nano-materials for industrial applications.
• Design and development of R&D strategy
• Nanotechnology and materials technology road-mapping  
• Intellectual property (IP) management and preparation of patents
• Identification of national, EU and international project development opportunities and secure funding to support R&D activities.
• Technical proposal development and preparation
• Securing public and private R&D investments
• Transnational consortium development  
• Transnational project management and business plan development
• Technology transfer and commercialization
• Team building and management
• Market assessment and technology watch
• EU regulations and policies
• Innovation partnership with small and medium scale enterprises (SME’s)
• International collaborations