Nikhil Koratkar joined the faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in January 2001 as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006 and to Full Professor in 2009. In 2011, Koratkar was also appointed a Full Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rensselaer. In 2012, Koratkar was appointed the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Chair Professor in Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Professor Koratkar is a winner of the NSF CAREER Award (2003), AHS Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Award (2004), RPI Early Career Award (2005), the Electrochemical Society's SES Young investigator Award (2009) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award (2015). He has published a book on graphene in composite materials and 143 journal papers (> 7500 Citations, H-Index: 49). His publications include one in Nature, two in Nature Materials, two in Nature Communications, five in Nano Letters, six in Advanced Materials, ten in ACS Nano and eight in Small. Koratkar has obtained ~$8.6 Million in research grants from several agencies including NSF, NYSERDA, ONR, ARO, AEC and Industry. In September 2010, Koratkar was appointed Editor of CARBON (Elsevier).
Nikhil Koratkar's research has focused on the synthesis, characterization, and application of nanoscale material systems. This includes graphene, carbon nanotubes, transition metal dichalcogenides, hexagonal boron nitride as well as metal and silicon nanostructures produced by a variety of techniques such as mechanical exfoliation, chemical vapor deposition, and oblique angle sputter and e-beam deposition. He is studying the fundamental mechanical, electrical, thermal, magnetic and optical properties of these one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) materials and developing a variety of composites, coating and device applications of these low dimensional materials. His work in nanostructured materials for lithium-ion batteries has resulted in a start-up company (Ener-Mat Technologies) which is aimed at commercializing graphene electrodes for next-generation energy storage solutions.