Bibliography
Mohanakrishna Ranganathan is a project scientist at the Beamline Optics group at PSI. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in electronics & communication at M.S.R.I.T. He later went on to pursue his integrated masters and PhD degree at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian space research organization, Bangalore. His thesis dissertation was on optical instrumentation for astronomy, titled “Hyperspectral and Spectro-polarimetric Instrumentation for the Sun”. Dr. Ranganathan subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the California state university, USA and at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Herein, he focused on the development of instrumentation for exoplanet research and designed and built optical instruments with high requirements on position and angular accurac of submicron and milliarcseconds respectively. Starting from November 2025, he is working as a research scientist in the Beamline Optics Group at PSI.
Institutional Responsibilities
The main objective of Mohan Ranganathan’s research is the development of new fabrication methods for blazed X-ray gratings together with the PSI spin-off company XRnanotech. His goals are to identify suitable design parameters of blazed X-ray gratings for synchrotron and free electron laser beamlines, and to develop a sound and reliable fabrication process for such gratings using direct write laser lithographic techniques. The fabricated grating prototype(s) will then be characterized in the metrology lab of the Beamline Optics Group to determine the surface roughness, pitch, blaze angle, and focusing parameters of the gratings.