Dr. Ramanan Krishnamoorti

Chief Energy Officer

Dr. Ramanan Krishnamoorti is the chief energy officer at the University of Houston. Prior to his current position, Krishnamoorti served as interim vice president for research and technology transfer for UH and the UH System.

During his tenure at the university, he has served as chair of the UH Cullen College of Engineering’s chemical and biomolecular engineering department, associate dean of research for engineering, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering with affiliated appointments as professor of petroleum engineering and professor of chemistry.

Dr. Krishnamoorti obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and doctoral degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 1994.

Dr. Suryanarayanan (Radha) Radhakrishnan

Managing Director

Dr. Suryanarayanan Radhakrishnan is a Professor of Practice in Decision and Information Sciences at University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. He is also the Managing Director of UH Energy. Prior to joining the University of Houston, he had worked 36 years for Shell in various responsible positions mostly in Planning, Strategy, Marketing and Business Management.

Since retiring from Shell in 2010, Dr. Radhakrishnan has been teaching courses at the Bauer College of Business, in Supply Chain Management, Project Management, Business Process Management, Innovation Management and Statistics. He teaches undergraduate, MBA and Executive MBA classes. At UH Energy, he has been involved in the development of UH Energy’s strategy working closely with the Energy Advisory Board. He coordinates the day to day working of UH Energy.

Dr. Radhakrishnan holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Osmania University, India; a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Oklahoma State University and a doctoral degree in Business Administration from University of Houston.

Dr. Alan Rossiter

Executive Director, External Relations & Educational Program Development

Dr. Alan Rossiter is UH Energy’s Executive Director, External Relations & Educational Program Development.

Prior to joining UH Energy, Dr. Rossiter served in a variety of engineering and management positions with two major chemical companies, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in England, and Saudi Basic Industries (SABIC) in Saudi Arabia. He also worked for the industrial energy efficiency and waste minimization consulting firm Linnhoff March in the US, as a senior consultant, operations manager, and interim president. Later he ran his own indendent consulting firm.

Dr. Rossiter obtained his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Cambridge. He is a licensed professional engineer (Texas).

He is also the lead author of Energy Management and Efficiency for the Process Industries (AIChE/ Wiley, 2015), and the contributing editor for Chemical Processing’s award-winning monthly Energy Saver column.

Charles McConnell

Energy Center Officer

Charles McConnell is the energy center officer of the Center for Carbon Management in Energy at the University of Houston. Prior to joining the CCME, McConnell was the executive director of the Energy and Environment Initiative at Rice University. McConnell served as the assistant secretary of energy in the US Department of Energy from 2011-13 and was responsible for the Office of Fossil Energy’s strategic policy leadership, budgets, project management, and research and development of the department’s coal, oil and gas, and advanced technologies programs, as well as for the operations and management of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the National Energy Technologies Laboratories.

McConnell also previously served as vice president of Carbon Management at Battelle Energy Technology in Columbus, Ohio and with Praxair, Inc. serving in a variety of operations, sales and global business and technology roles including hydrogen, gasification and energy as the global VP of energy and hydrogen.

McConnell is currently a board member of the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) Foundation in North Dakota, is a member of the National Coal Council, has served on the Society of Petroleum Engineers and National Petroleum Council subcommittees, and has held a number of board positions including chairmanships of the Gasification & Syngas Technologies Council and the Clean Carbon Technology Foundation of Texas. McConnell holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University (1977) and an MBA in finance from Cleveland State University (1984).

Dr. Konstantinos Kostarelos

Research Manager

Dr. Kostarelos earned his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, working on an inter-disciplinary team that adapted several petroleum industry technologies for environmental applications with Gary Pope’s group. While there, he lead a research effort on a new concept called “Neutral Buoyancy Approach,” which is an extension of Surfactant Enhanced Aquifer Remediation (SEAR) directed at recovering hazardous liquids (DNAPLs) from the subsurface. The research group also adapted various enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques for the purpose of recovering DNAPLs: partitioning interwell tracer testing (PITT) and polymer-based viscosifiers are two examples.

Before joining the University of Houston, Dr. Kostarelos was on the faculty at The University of Cyprus where he and his colleagues have founded the NIREAS International Water Research Center, which included his Subsurface Research Laboratory and resulted in an award of 2.5M Euros. His research interests in the area of flow in porous media and fracture flow include EOR technologies, PITT, among others. His work has also involved development of an NIR-based, optical fiber chemical sensor that could be used in the subsurface environment. See the RESEARCH tab for a listing of current research projects.

Dr. Deidra Perry

Program Director II

Blake Stroud

Research Business Administrator

Sharon Lahey

Executive Administrative Assistant

Li Lopez

Administrative Assistant

Aparajita Datta

Research Scholar

Ed Bailey

Communications Coordinator

Emily Pickrell

UH Energy Scholar

Emily Pickrell is a veteran energy reporter, with more than 12 years of experience covering everything from oil fields to industrial water policy to the latest on Mexican climate change laws. Emily has reported on energy issues from around the U.S., Mexico and the United Kingdom. Prior to journalism, Emily worked as a policy analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office and as an auditor for the international aid organization, CARE.

Loren Steffy

UH Energy Scholar

Loren Steffy is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly, an executive producer for Rational Middle Media and a managing director for 30 Point Strategies, where he heads the 30 Point Press publishing imprint. He is the author of five nonfiction books: Deconstructed: An Insider’s View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades (with Stan Marek), The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens (with Chrysta Castañeda), George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet, The Man Who Thought Like a Ship, and Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit. His first novel, The Big Empty, was published in May 2021.

Steffy is the former business columnist for the Houston Chronicle and previously was the Dallas (and Houston) bureau chief and a senior writer for Bloomberg News. His award-winning writing has been published in newspapers and other publications worldwide. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M University.