Aravind Baby

Aravind Baby (Babs) is a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne working on technoeconomic and life cycle analysis of battery recycling and critical material extraction technologies. Prior to joining Argonne in 2024, Babs performed experimental research in multiple battery technologies, electrocatalysts, and reaction engineering.

Babs completed his Ph.D. research on developing electrochemical techniques to refurbish lead-acid batteries under the guidance of Prof. Joaquin Rodriguez-Lopez in 2024. Prior to that, he developed cathode materials for aqueous zinc-ion batteries as an undergraduate student in India.

Education

• Ph.D., Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, 2024.
• M.S., Materials, Indian Institute of Science, 2019.
• B.S., Materials (Minor: Chemistry), Indian Institute of Science, 2018.

Awards and Honors

• Outreach Mentor, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (2025), Argonne National Laboratory
• Research Live 3-minute thesis competition Finalist, (2024) University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 
• Chevron Studio Finalist in accelerating commercialization of decarbonization technologies (2024)
• Outstanding Teaching Assistant (2023), Excellent Teaching Assistant (2023, 2022), University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
• Racheff Teaching Fellow (2023, 2022), University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
• NSF Cyber Ambassador certificate for Communication, Teamwork, and Leadership (2022)

Memberships 

• Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society (2020-Present)

Select Publications

• Baby, A.*; Asserghine, A.*; Gao, E.J.; Zhao, H.; Rodríguez-López, J. A Simple Room-Temperature Refurbishment Method for Sulfated Lead-Acid Batteries Using Ammonium Acetate Treatment. J. Power Sources 2025, 627, 2358112
• Asserghine, A.*; Baby, A.*; N’Diaye, J., Romo, A.I.B.; Das, S.; Litts, C.A.; Jain, P.K.; Rodríguez-López, J. Dissolved Oxygen Redox as the Source of Hydrogen Peroxide and Hydroxyl Radical in Sonicated Emulsive Water Microdroplets. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2025 147 (14), 11851-11858.
• Baby, A.; Senthilkumar, B.; Barpanda, P. Low-Cost Rapid Template-Free Synthesis of Nanoscale Zinc Spinels for Energy Storage and Electrocatalytic Applications. ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 2019, 2(5), 3211–3219.