Akshay received his undergraduate degree from St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi in 2006 and his MSc from the University of Sheffield in 2007. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2011, working in the group of Prof. Sir Richard Friend. From 2011 to 2014 he held a Junior Research Fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. As of October 2014 he has run an independent research group at the University of Cambridge and is an EPSRC Early Career Fellow & Winton Advanced Research Fellow. He was appointed to a Harding Lectureship in October 2019.

Akshay's research is focussed on the electronic and optical properties of molecular semiconductors, quantum dots and novel nanoscale structures. He has worked extensively on organic photovoltaics as well as singlet exciton fission in molecular semiconductors, using ultrafast spectroscopy to elucidate the how charge delocalisation, spin and vibrational coherence underlie the physics of these systems. His group is currently interested in areas such as solar energy harvesting in photovoltaics and artificial photosynthetic complexes, molecular spintronics and the photophysics of novel nanoscale semiconductor materials.

“Operando optical tracking of single-particle ion dynamics and phase transitions in battery electrodes”, Alice J. Merryweather, Christoph Schnedermann, Quentin Jacquet, Clare P. Grey, Akshay Rao, Nature (2021, In press), Preprint: arXiv:2011.10537 “Ultrafast melting and recovery of collective order in the excitonic insulator Ta2NiSe5”, Hope M. Bretscher, Paolo Andrich, Prachi Telang, Anupam Singh, Luminita Harnaga, Ajay K. Sood, Akshay Rao, Nature Communications, 12, Article number: 1699 (2021), “Imaging the coherent propagation of collective modes in the excitonic insulator candidate Ta2NiSe5 at room temperature”, Hope M. Bretscher, Paolo Andrich, Yuta Murakami, Denis Golež, Benjamin Remez, Prachi Telang, Anupam Singh, Luminita Harnagea, Nigel R. Cooper, Andrew J. Millis, Philipp Werner, A. K. Sood, Akshay Rao, Science Advances, (2021, In Press), Preprint: arXiv:2003.10799. “Highly efficient exciton transport via transient delocalization in films of poly(3-hexylthiophene) nanofibers prepared by seeded growth”, Alexander J. Sneyd, Tomoya Fukui, David Palecek, Suryoday Prodhan, Isabella Wagner, Yifan Zhang, Jooyoung Sung, Zahra Andaji-Garmaroudi, Liam R. MacFarlane, J. Diego Garcia-Hernandez, Linjun Wang, George R. Whittell, Justin M. Hodgkiss, Kai Chen, David Beljonne, Ian Manners, Richard H. Friend, Akshay Rao, Science Advances, (2021, In Press), Preprint: arXiv:2009.05989. “Photon upconversion through triplet exciton-mediated energy relays”, Sanyang Han, Hui Xu, Zhigao Yi, Jiangbin Zhang, Qifei Gu, Liangliang Liang, Xian Qin, Jiahui Xu, Yiming Wu, Artem Bakulin, Akshay Rao and Xiaogang Liu, Nature Communication (2021, In press). “The role of charge recombination to spin-triplet excitons in non-fullerene acceptor organic solar cells”, Alexander J. Gillett, Alberto Privitera, Rishat Dilmurat, Akchheta Karki, Deping Qian, Anton Pershin, Giacomo Londi, William K. Myers, Jaewon Lee, Jun Yuan, Seo-Jin Ko, Moritz K. Riede, Feng Gao, Guillermo C. Bazan, Akshay Rao, Thuc-Quyen Nguyen, David Beljonne, Richard H. Friend, Nature (2021, In Press), Preprint: arXiv:2010.10978 “The bright side of defects in MoS2 and WS2 and a generalizable chemical treatment protocol for defect passivation”, Hope M. Bretscher, Zhaojun Li, James Xiao, Diana Y. Qiu, Sivan Refaely-Abramson, Jack Alexander-Webber, Arelo O.A. Tanoh, Ye Fan, Géraud Delport, Cyan Williams, Samuel D. Stranks, Stephan Hofmann, Jeffrey B. Neaton, Steven G. Louie, Akshay Rao, ACS Nano (2021, In Press), Preprint: arXiv:2002.03956 “Giant Photoluminescence Enhancement in MoSe2 monolayers treated with Oleic Acid Ligands”, Arelo O.A Tanoh, James Xiao, Jack Alexander-Webber, Raj Pandya, Zhaojun Li, Akshay Rao, Nanoscale Advances, (2021, In Press), Preprint: arXiv:2006.04505. “Exciton Diffusion in Highly-Ordered One Dimensional Conjugated Polymers: Effects of Back-Bone Torsion, Electronic Symmetry, Phonons and Annihilation”, Raj Pandya, Antonios M. Alvertis, Qifei Gu, Jooyoung Sung, Laurent Legrand, David Kréher, Thierry Barisien, Alex W. Chin, Christoph Schnedermann, Akshay Rao, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 12, 3669–3678, (2021), DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c00193, “Efficient Energy Funneling in Spatially Tailored Segmented Conjugated Block Copolymer Nanofiber-Quantum Dot or Rod Conjugates”, Yifan Zhang, Huda Shaikh, Alexander J. Sneyd, Jia Tian, James Xiao, Arthur Blackburn, Akshay Rao, Richard H. Friend and Ian Manners, Journal of the American Chemical Society, (2021), DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c01571, “Competition between triplet pair formation and excimer-like recombination controls singlet fission yield”, A.Buyanova, Chanakarn Phansa, Maria E.Sandoval-Salinas, David Casanova, William K.Myers, Neil C.Greenham, AkshayRao, Weimin M.Chen, Yuttapoom Puttisong, Cell Reports Physical Science, Volume 2, Issue 2, 100339, (2021), DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2021.100339, “Suppressing aggregation induced quenching in anthracene based conjugated polymers”, Daniel G. Congrave, Bluebell H. Drummond, Victor Gray, Andrew D. Bond, Akshay Rao, Richard H. Friend and Hugo Bronstein, Polymer Chemistry, 12, 1830-1836, (2021), DOI: 10.1039/D1PY00118C, “Lanthanide-doped inorganic nanoparticles turn molecular triplet excitons bright”, Sanyang Han, Renren Deng, Qifei Gu, Limeng Ni, Uyen Huynh, Jiangbin Zhang, Zhigao Yi, Baodan Zhao, Hiroyuki Tamura, Anton Pershin, Hui Xu, Zhiyuan Huang, Shahab Ahmad , Mojtaba, Abdi-Jalebi, Aditya Sadhanala, Ming Lee Tang, Artem Bakulin, David Beljonne, Xiaogang Liu, Akshay Rao, Nature, 587, 594–599, (2020), DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2932-2, “Long-lived and disorder-free charge transfer states enable endothermic charge separation in efficient non-fullerene organic solar cells”, Ture F. Hinrichsen, Christopher C.S. Chan, David Paleček, Alexander Gillett, Shangshang Chen, Xinhui Zou, Chao Ma, Guichuan Zhang, Hin-Lap Yip, Kam Sing Wong, Richard H. Friend, He Yan, Akshay Rao, Philip C.Y. Chow, Nature Communications, Article number: 5617, (2020), “Optical projection and spatial separation of spin entangled triplet-pairs from the S1(21Ag–) state of pi-conjugated systems”, Raj Pandya, Qifei Gu, Alexandre Cheminal, Richard Y. S. Chen, Edward P. Booker, Richard Soucek, Michel Schott, Laurent Legrand, Fabrice Mathevet, Neil C. Greenham, Thierry Barisien, Andrew J. Musser, Alex W. Chin, Akshay Rao, CHEM, (2020), DOI:10.1016/j.chempr.2020.09.011, “Direct vs Delayed Triplet Energy Transfer from Organic Semiconductors to Quantum Dots and Implications for Luminescent Harvesting of Triplet Excitons”, Victor Gray, Jesse R. Allardice, Zhilong Zhang, Simon Dowland, James Xiao, Anthony J. Petty II, John E. Anthony, Neil C. Greenham, Akshay Rao, ACS Nano, (2020), DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b09339, “Directed Energy Transfer from Monolayer WS2 to Near-Infrared Emitting PbS–CdS Quantum Dots”, Arelo O. A. Tanoh, Nicolas Gauriot, Géraud Delport, James Xiao, Raj Pandya, Jooyoung Sung, Jesse Allardice, Zhaojun Li, Cyan A. Williams, Alan Baldwin, Samuel D. Stranks, and Akshay Rao, ACS Nano, (2020), DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c05818, “Optical and electronic properties of colloidal CdSe Quantum Rings”, James Xiao, Yun Liu, Violette Steinmetz, Mustafa Çağlar, Jeffrey Mc Hugh, Tomi Baikie, Nicolas Gauriot, Malgorzata Nguyen, Edoardo Ruggeri, Zahra Andaji-Garmaroudi, Samuel D. Stranks, Laurent Legrand, Thierry Barisien, Richard H. Friend, Neil C. Greenham, Akshay Rao, Raj Pandya, ACS Nano, (2020), DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c01752, “The impact of exciton delocalization on exciton-vibration interactions in organic semiconductors”, Antonios M Alvertis, Raj Pandya, Loreta A Muscarella, Nipun Sawhney, Malgorzata Nguyen, Bruno Ehrler, Akshay Rao, Richard H Friend, Alex W Chin, Bartomeu Monserrat, Physical Review B, (2020), In Press. “Enhanced Ballistic Transport of Charge Carriers in Alloyed and K-Passivated Alloyed Perovskite Thin Films”, Jooyoung Sung, Stuart Macpherson, Akshay Rao, Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 11, 14, 5402–5406, (2020), DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c01548,