Dr Mega Kar

Dr Mega Kar completed her undergraduate degree with honours at The University of Melbourne in 2008. She then went on to study her doctor of philosophy (PhD) at Monash University (2012-2015) in Professor Douglas MacFarlane’s group, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES). Dr Kar has recently been awarded the prestigious 2021 Alfred Deakin Research Fellow at Deakin University working on exploring novel low-cost and safe materials for zinc-air batteries. Prior to this, Dr Kar was a Laureate Research Fellow at Monash University (2015-2021), lecturing and specializing in IL synthesis and electrochemistry, working on electrodeposition and metal batteries. During this time her main research focused on designing novel ionic liquids for application in rechargeable magnesium batteries, a collaboration project with Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing, North America (TEMA). Dr Kar has co-authored a textbook titled Fundamentals of Ionic Liquid Science – From chemistry to applications, published in 2017. During her time in Monash, Dr. Kar also received The Most Promising Woman Scientist award at the 6th International Congress on Ionic Liquids and was also awarded the Faculty of Science Advancing Women’s Success Grant to design workshops or other activities to help overcome cultural and practical barriers with the aim of increasing retention of women in energy science. In 2018 she was also been awarded the Australian-India Early Career Research Fellowship grant from the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) to investigate new ionic materials for next-generation rechargeable metal batteries.