Graduate Fellows Bio
Darshan Karwat
His Story
Darshan grew up in Mumbai, India, and played cricket and soccer while growing up. He still plays soccer, and he very much enjoys cooking. Darshan maintains a blog called Minimizing Entropy.
His Research:
Darshan's research falls broadly under combustion and physical chemistry, and under sustainability/environmental ethics, with philosophy, history, and sociology all mixed in. He is studying the environmental and atmospheric chemistry effects of alternative fuels in aviation by understanding the evolution of different chemical pollutant species caused by the combustion of large hydrocarbon fuels blended with bio-based fuels. These studies attempt to isolate the individual reaction pathways and kinetic mechanisms that drive the formation of toxic air pollutants, greenhouse gases, soot precursors and soot itself. At the same time, he is interested in why society feels compelled to rely on technological solutions to socio-environmental problems. Key questions he is thinking about are: What is the moral community of technology, and how has this evolved over time? How has thinking about the environment changed and influenced engineering and decision-making? Why is the engineering profession involved in the creation of technologies that have unintended consequences?