Nikhil is a Corporate Fellow in SABIC’s Corporate Technology and Innovation organization. He splits his time between Corporate/Petchem SBU and Specialties SBU and is largely responsible for their strategic Polymer related activities which includes incubating new platforms, assess key industrial partnership and potential acquisitions, establish critical external university relationships, new product development and finally champion talent management.  His contributions include, but not restricted to the development of a new platform on Advanced Composites (launching new product line UDMAX^TM).  He spent 3 years (2015-2018) in The Netherlands where he was responsible for setting up SABIC’s Advanced Composites Center of Excellence in Geleen as well as partnerships with Airborne in The Hague for developing the first of its kind, fully automated Laminate production line for Mass Markets.

In late 2020, he accepted the additional role of Adjunct Professor at Rice University’s department of Material Science and NanoEngineering (affiliated with Prof. Ajayan Pulickel – Department Head).

Nikhil completed his Ph.D. at Virginia Tech in Material Science and Engineering in 1999, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship, at Virginia Tech under the guidance of Prof. J. J. Lesko in Engineering Science and Mechanics.  Prior to joining SABIC in 2012, Nikhil’s industrial career spanned 12 years at The Dow Chemical Company (Dow) where he held various positions within Research and Development.  During his tenure at Dow, he was responsible for creating and launching FORTEGRA^TM, a new family of rubber toughening technologies for epoxy and epoxy vinylester based thermoset resins. In 2009, as Global Technology Leader, he initiated a new platform in Thermoset Composites that in 2011 resulted in the launch of VORAFORCE^TM, a family of Epoxy and Polyurethane formulated systems, designed to address the fabrication needs of technologies such as Ultra-Fast RTM (resin transfer molding), Filament Winding, Pultrusion and SRIM (structural reaction injection molding).

Nikhil’s publications include chapters in 4 books and over 124 peer reviewed journal papers and conference proceedings. He holds 46 filed and granted patents. Nikhil served as Chairman of the ‘Failure Analysis and Prevention Special Interest Group’ at SPE-ANTEC in 2002 and co-chaired the ‘Bonding, Joining and Finishing of Composites’ division of SPE-ACCE in 2008. In 2009, he was elected to the board for SPE’s Composites Division and was its Technical Program Chair at ANTEC in 2012 and 2013. In 2014, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the PTIC at Texas A&M.  He has been an invited speaker at various venues including Deformation, Yield and Fracture of Polymers (DYFP) Netherlands, SAMPE India, Rolduc Polymer Conference, APS, ACS and ACMA.  In 2019, he was elected to the Industrial Board of the Macromolecules Innovation Institute (MII) at Virginia Tech and in 2020.