Lakshmiprasad Gurrala

Dr. Lakshmiprasad Gurrala joined FEWLS research group as a Research Associate, in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Kansas. He received a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Sciences from CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (2018) and Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Pune, India. His doctoral studies included the development of heterogeneous catalysts for the oxidative conversion of hydrocarbons, and biomass-derived compounds to added value fine chemicals. Dr. Gurrala is highly proficient in a wide range of analytical tools, including those required for catalyst characterization, product determination and quantification. Before moving to KU, he worked as a project scientist for the catalytic transformation of industrial waste to value added chemicals via catalytic transformations at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), India. He was also an Institutional Post-doctoral at the same department with Dr. R. Vinu for three years. He worked on various challenges associated with the circular economy, including 1) the development of heterogeneous catalyst materials for different catalytic transformations of biomass, lignin and waste plastic to value-added products; and 2) pyrolysis techniques to generate bio-oils, and their upgrade to fuel blends, followed by subsequent energy evaluation. In addition to his Ph.D., Dr. Gurrala also holds an M.Sc. degree in Inorganic chemistry (2010) and B.Sc. degree (2008) from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India.