Dr Patel did his PhD in Physics from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in India in 2009 and his post-doctoral research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) until 2012. He started his academic career as a research assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK).
In early 2017, he joined the University of Liverpool (UoL) in the UK as a Senior Lecturer in Nuclear Materials (tenured assistant professor). At UoL, he also serves as the Director of Dual PhD programme with UoL and National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan; Chairs the Gender Equality (Athena Swan) SAT committee for the School of Engineering and is also the acting lead for the EPSRC Doctoral Centre on ‘Growing skills for Reliable Economic Energy from Nuclear’ (GREEN-CDT).
He is a visiting researcher at CentraleSupélec – Paris Saclay Univ. studying crystallography of oxides of interest to nuclear technology. He was a Research Fellow of the Department of Atomic Energy in India and a Sandwich PhD Fellow of the French embassy.
He has published 43 papers in peer-reviewed journals on radiation effects in nuclear materials and materials for renewable energy. His primary research areas include: Radiation effects and modifications in materials; Crystallography of complex oxides; Nuclear materials. He has recently initiated research in Low-cost bi-functional catalysts for hydrogen and powder metallurgy for additive manufacturing of Al-alloys.
His groups expertise lies in designing experiments to simulate radiation effects using high energy accelerators in various user facilities around the world and; characterising the structure/microstructure of materials using x-ray/neutron based scattering techniques and electron microscopy.