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Rahul Rsujanani

Rahul Sujanani

Assistant Professor
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Rahul Sujanani joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering as an Assistant Professor in August 2025. Rahul’s research primarily focuses on understanding mass transport and thermodynamics across polymer-solution interfaces in order to design high-performance membranes for water, energy, and electrochemical separations. Rahul obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UT Austin in 2022, where he worked with Benny Freeman studying ion and water transport in polymer membranes for water treatment. Rahul completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, working with Rachel Segalman to study ion transport in polymer electrolytes used in energy storage applications.

Department

Chemical & Biological Engineering

Contact

4635, Engineering Hall
1415 Engineering Dr
Madison, WI

Featured news

Focus on new faculty: Rahul Sujanani is developing smarter membranes

September 2, 2025

  • PhD 2022, The University of Texas at Austin
  • BS 2016, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

  • Polymers
  • Membranes
  • Ion Separations
  • Water, Energy, and Sustainability
  • Transport Phenomena
  • Thermodynamics

  • 2024 ACS, PMSE Centennial Future Leader Award
  • 2021 The University of Texas at Austin, Cullen M. Crain Endowed Scholarship in Engineering
  • 2019 U.S. Department of Energy , EFRC Student and Postdoc Team Science Award
  • 2018 American Society of Indian Engineers and Architects, American Society of Indian Engineers and Architects Scholar
  • 2018 Eastman Chemical, Eastman Chemical Fellowship in Chemical Engineering
  • 2018 NSF, GRFP Honorable Mention (Nominated)
  • 2018 American Society of Indian Engineers and Architects, Scholar
  • 2016 The University of Texas at Austin, Cockrell School of Engineering Fellowship
  • 2015 ACS, Society of Chemical Industry Scholar

  • Arias Ponce, I., Sujanani, R., Moon, J. D., Urueña, J. M., Hawker, C. J., & Segalman, R. A. (2024). 3D Printing of Functional Hydrogel Devices for Screenings of Membrane Permeability and Selectivity. ACS Applied Polymer Materials, 6(23), 14629-14637.
  • Sujanani, R., Reimund, K. K., Gleason, K. L., & Freeman, B. D. (2024). Hydraulic permeation-induced water concentration gradients in ion exchange membranes. Journal of Membrane Science, 705, 122858.
  • Sujanani, R., Nguyen, P. H., Gordon, L. W., Bamford, J. T., Zele, A., Pedretti, B. J., Lynd, N. A., Clemént, R. J., & Segalman, R. A. (2024). Influence of Water Sorption on Ionic Conductivity in Polyether Electrolytes at Low Hydration. ACS Macro Letters, 14(1), 64-71.
  • Sujanani, R., Nordness, O., Miranda, A., Katz, L. E., Brennecke, J. F., & Freeman, B. D. (2023). Accounting for ion pairing effects on sulfate salt sorption in cation exchange membranes. The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 127(8), 1842-1855.
  • Aydogan Gokturk, P., Sujanani, R., Qian, J., Wang, Y., Katz, L. E., Freeman, B. D., & Crumlin, E. J. (2022). The Donnan potential revealed. Nature communications, 13(1), 5880.
  • Sujanani, R., Katz, L. E., Paul, D. R., & Freeman, B. D. (2021). Aqueous ion partitioning in Nafion: Applicability of Manning's counter-ion condensation theory. Journal of Membrane Science, 638, 119687.
  • Warnock, S. J., Sujanani, R., Zofchak, E. S., Zhao, S., Dilenschneider, T. J., Hanson, K. G., Mukherjee, S., Ganesan, V., Freeman, B. D., Abu-Omar, M. M., & others, (2021). Engineering Li/Na selectivity in 12-Crown-4--functionalized polymer membranes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(37), e2022197118.
  • Allen, M. J., Sujanani, R., Chamseddine, A., Freeman, B. D., & Page, Z. A. (2021). Mechanically robust hydrophobized double network hydrogels and their fundamental salt transport properties. Journal of Polymer Science, 59(21), 2581-2589.
  • Moon, J. D., Sujanani, R., Geng, Z., Freeman, B. D., Segalman, R. A., & Hawker, C. J. (2021). Versatile synthetic platform for polymer membrane libraries using functional networks. Macromolecules, 54(2), 866-873.
  • Sujanani, R., Landsman, M. R., Jiao, S., Moon, J. D., Shell, M. S., Lawler, D. F., Katz, L. E., & Freeman, B. D. (2020). Designing solute-tailored selectivity in membranes: Perspectives for water reuse and resource recovery. ACS Macro Letters, 9(11), 1709-1717.

  • CBE 310 - Chemical Process Thermodynamics (Fall 2025)
  • CBE 890 - Pre-Dissertator's Research (Fall 2025)