Dr. Suman Khatiwada is a co-founder, chief technology officer (CTO), and board director at Syzygy Plasmonics. In his role as CTO, he leads the technology team in developing, scaling up, and integrating the company’s core technologies, namely photocatalysts and fully electrified chemical reactors. He has built Syzygy’s patent portfolio with more than a dozen patent families and several dozen trade secrets. As a co-founder and an integral part of the management team, Dr. Khatiwada has helped Syzygy raise three rounds of venture capital funding, win three government grants, and build a team of 100 employees and counting.

Dr. Khatiwada earned his PhD in Materials Science and Nanoengineering from Rice University and his bachelor’s degree in physics from Morgan State University. While at Rice, he co-founded Big Delta Systems, now enPower Inc, to commercialize spray-paintable Li-ion batteries. After Rice and before co-founding Syzygy, he worked at Baker Hughes as a research scientist for 3 years. Dr. Khatiwada holds 19 patents granted in the United States and other jurisdictions worldwide. In 2020, he was selected as one of the nation’s brightest early career engineers by the National Academies of Engineering’s U.S. Frontiers of Engineering program