Prabhakar named 2024-25 Fulbright Scholar

Pavana Prabhakar, the Charles G. Salmon Associate Professor in the departments of civil and environmental engineering and mechanical engineering, has been named a 2024-25 Fulbright Scholar.

Prabhakar is a leader in the field of engineering composite materials. She’ll go to Chennai, India for a nine-month research trip, beginning in September 2024, supported by the Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award. While in India, Prabhakar will conduct fundamental research to enable more sustainable next-generation composite materials, especially fiber-reinforced polymer composites.

Fiber-reinforced polymers are composite materials that use fibers such as glass or carbon to strengthen the base polymer. These materials are being used more frequently in the aerospace and wind energy industries and are piling up in landfills and scrap yards around the world—including in India—at the end of their use lives. Prabhakar’s project will look for solutions to create natural and sustainable types of fiber-reinforced polymer composites, with the goal of accelerating their widespread use and durability.

Prabhakar has received recognition and awards for her work, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an award through the Office of Naval Research’s Young Investigator Program, an award through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research’s Young Investigator Program. She won the 2019 American Society for Composites’ Young Composites Researcher Award and serves as an associate editor for the journal Composites Part B: Engineering.

Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious, competitive fellowships that provide opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. Recipient scholars also play a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy by engaging and establishing long-term relationships between people and nations. The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 and has since been awarded to more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and professionals of all backgrounds and fields.