Vikram Rao (BT-MT,’65) is Executive Director, Research Triangle Energy Consortium   www.rtec-rtp.org  , a non-profit in energy founded by Duke University, North Carolina State University, RTI International and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Its mission is to illuminate national energy priorities, and those of the world by extension, and to catalyze research to address these priorities.

Dr. Rao advises the non-profit RTI International, venture capitalist Energy Ventures AS, and firms BioLargo Inc., Global Energy Talent Ltd., Biota Technology Inc., Melior Innovations Inc. and Eastman Chemicals Company.  He retired as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Halliburton Company in 2008 and followed his wife to Chapel Hill, NC, where she is on the UNC faculty.  Later that year he took his current position.  He also is past Chairman of the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission.

Dr. Rao’s book Shale Gas: the Promise and the Peril was released in 2012 by RTI Press and can be found at www.rti.org/shalegasbook .  It is written for general audiences and is intended to inform on the heated debate on fracturing for shale gas.  The Revised Edition with six new chapters and extensive revision was released on August 8, 2015 http://www.rti.org/shaleoilandgas.  His forthcoming book with Dr. Rob Knight, Sustainable Shale Oil and Gas: Analytical Chemistry, Geochemistry and Biochemistry Methods, is scheduled for release by Elsevier Press in October, 2016.

Dr. Rao holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India, along with a master’s degree and a doctorate in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University.  He is the author of more than 30 publications and has been awarded 40 US patents and foreign analogs.