Akshat Jiwan Sharma

Over the last couple of months I've invested a healthy amount of time in engaging with US representatives working at the intersection of academia,industry and policy. Earlier in May the US Dept of commerce organised a “Select USA campaign” that was meant to position the USA as the leading destination for investment and I had an opportunity to connect with several Foreign service officers in Delhi promoting USA to Indian entrepreneurs. Before that, last year in December, I met online with researchers at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to understand how they are using AI to accelerate fusion research.  My engagement continued with several non profit organisations like American society of Metals , Society for automotive engineers and American institute of physics —plasma division and it enabled me to get the big picture view of the US research landscape. Which is why I was really excited to attend the inaugural genesis mission summit held last week to see what ann...

It was a great honor for me to observe the United Nations General Assembly informal interactive dialogue on Accelerating the global energy transition. President Annalena Baerbock led the discussion emphasizing that while the transition to renewable energy is happening at an unprecedented speed it is important to ensure that this transition is fair [1].  Her statement was backed by numbers.  Renewable energy deployment has been rapid but it has also been concentrated in few prosperous countries. Nearly 80 % of new RE capacity was built in China,EU & the USA while Africa accounted for a meager 1.6%.  Amid the optimism surrounding RE we often tend to forget that what truly enables RE at scale is massive industrial capacity. This is clear if we trace the supply chain of solar panels,wind turbines ,magnets and EV. Meanwhile people who need energy the most have no access to either renewable or fossil based power. Nearly 565 Million people in subsaharan Africa la...

Happy to participate in a CSIS online event for a discussion on the implications of the NATO summit organised earlier this month in Ankara,Turkiye. Former PM of Netherlands,Mr.  Mark Rutte has been leading NATO as the Secretary General for an year now and at Ankara he presented his vision for “NATO 3.0”[1-2]  In his speech he highlighted NATO moving away from ‘planning’ to ‘implementation’ and his idea of NATO 3.0 was appealing because of his focus on ‘military-industrialisation’ rather than straightforward and frankly overly simplistic arms procurement deals. Clearly Secretary General Rutte has given a lot of thought to the problem of making the defense industry more sustainable and his vision seems to align with my own ideas which I applied to the space industry [3-4].  Both space and defense are funded by tax collection and neither of these industries have demonstrated the ability to sustain themselves economically if that funding dried up. Space in particular is extre...

I was glad to participate in this month's ASM advanced materials manufacturing committee meeting for a talk on Nickel Titanium alloys and its additive manufacturing process development via artificial intelligence and machine learning.  Dermot Brabazon Prof. at the Dublin City University and deputy director at I-Form ,the publicly funded institution leading Ireland's manufacturing innovation, presented the findings of his research group. NiTi alloys ,most famously Nitinol,are known for exhibiting super elasticity and shape memory effect ,which causes material to return to its original shape after being heated.  This has found several applications in the fields of medicine and actuation. The general processes of manufacturing NiTi alloys are now well developed however additive manufacturing introduces new challenges that are not present in traditional melt cast and heat treated products, that is process uniformity.  So while AM is successful in producing complex shapes wit...

Senator Chris Coons recently critiqued policies of president Trump by saying  "Trump promised to lower costs on day 1, and yet as prices keep rising on everything from gas to groceries to health care, he calls affordability a "hoax". It doesn’t need to be this way. Americans deserve leaders who care about affordability and are willing to do something about it." https://www.facebook.com/share/p/186KVFsrQ9/ He is right. Affordability has become a problem in the USA and the best way to improve affordability is to start manufacturing goods again instead of importing it from Asia. But there are several problems with that.  American consumers are not willing to pay increased costs of manufacturing due to rightful demands by workers to increase wages  This is understandable. The marketplace can be brutal that way. Especially in segments that are highly contested. This is why it is important to continue to build new industries that can sustain growth. The energy and power ...

  7 Jul 2026  I thank the Renewable Thermal  Collaborative (RTC) for organising a webinar highlighting some of the recent achievements of thermal energy storage technologies. Conceptually thermal-energy storage is quite simple. You heat up a material and it stores energy either in the form of sensible heat, latent heat (phase change) or thermochemically.  At medium grade, with temperatures  of up to 400C, these systems are hard to beat as they can provide industrially useful heat. This stored heat is highly valuable in food processing and bio refining industries because process temperatures rarely exceed 200C. Besides food processing there are several other industries that can use medium grade heat for drying and preheating.  Since heat is used in all industries, it is the single unifying theme of the entire manufacturing sector and residential too because many electrical appliances are performing temp control work. Thermal energy storage technology is ther...

 2 Jul 2026  Great honor to be a part of discussion led by Prof Vasi,Electrical Engg,IIT Bombay on industry academia collaboration. Research has always had to and will always have to balance funding from government and industry while pursuing something that is truly novel ,yet can have practical applications in the future.  Directed research has its merit. But nothing beats original ,curiosity driven enquiry. Majority of science and all of its transformative ideas that we take for granted today were discovered by people who were merely following their curiosity and not thinking about immediate applications. Those came decades later. All pioneers were explorers — they built new fields where no expertise existed.  Fundamental research carries with it the potential to create new industries, it's difficult to put a dollar value on it and it can't exactly be funded in the same way as a typical R&D lab with a fixed outcome or a deliverable. Scientific inquires can be a...