Govindhan Dhanaraj is the Manager of Crystal Growth Technologies at Advanced Renewable Energy Company （ARC Energy） at Nashua， New Hampshire （USA） focusing on the growth of large size sapphire crystals for LED lighting applications， characterization and related crystal growth furnace development. He received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science， Bangalore and his Master of Science from Anna University （India）. Immediately after his doctoral degree， Dr. Dhanaraj joined a National Laboratory， presently known as Rajaramanna Center for Advanced Technology in India， where he established an advanced Crystal Growth Laboratory for the growth of optical and laser crystals. Prior to joining ARC Energy， Dr. Dhanaraj served as a Research Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering， Stony Brook University， NY， and also held a position of Research Assistant Professor at Hampton University， VA. During his 25 years of focused expertise in crystal growth research， he has developed optical， laser and semiconductor bulk crystals and SiC epitaxial films using solution， flux， Czochralski， Bridgeman， gel and vapor methods， and characterized them using x-ray topography， synchrotron topography， chemical etching and optical and atomic force microscopic techniques. He co-organized a symposium on Industrial Crystal Growth under the 17th American Conference on Crystal Growth and Epitaxy in conjunction with the 14th US Biennial Workshop on Organometallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy held at Lake Geneva， WIin 2009. Dr. Dhanaraj has delivered invited lectures and also served as session chairman in many crystal growth and materials science meetings. He has published over 100 papers and his research articles have attracted over 250 rich citations.
