Charusheela Ramanan has a background in Physical and Materials Chemistry. After completing her B.Sc. at the University of California, Berkeley, she carried out her Ph.D. research in Chemistry at Northwestern University. Her thesis focused on the development and photophysical characterization of novel material systems for organic photovoltaic devices. She continued her research career as a postdoctoral researcher Vrije Universiteit/Laserlab Amsterdam, where she used time-resolved spectroscopy to study the biophysics of photosynthetic energy conversion. Following this, she worked as a senior researcher in photoconversion materials, developing in situ Raman characterization of organic optoelectronic devices.
In March 2017, she joined the division of Molecular Electronics at MPI-P Mainz as a group leader for Disordered Materials for Organic and Biohybrid Electronics. While there, she was awarded a grant for the project “Multi-scale design principles of polymer photocatalysts for solar fuels” (2019).
Since September 2020, she is an Assistant Professor in the Physics&Astronomy Department at the Vrije Universiteit/LaserLaB Amsterdam, where she leads the Disordered Molecular Materials group within the Photoconversion Materials Section. Charusheela was awarded a National Growth Fund (NGF) grant together with colleague Sven Askes (2024) for the project “PolyPulse” within the program CircularPlasticsNL.
Community Development
- Advanced Summer School on Photochemistry, HRSMC
- Chair, Programme Committee, NWO Physics 2025
- Programme Committee, NWO Physics 2024
