At a Glance
Dr. Damodaran Krishnan Achary
Research Professor of Chemistry
Director, NMR Facility
University of Pittsburgh
450 Chevron Science Center
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
damodak@pitt.edu
412-624-8403
Elsewhere
Damodaran Krishnan Achary
Research Professor of Chemistry and Director of the NMR Facility, University of Pittsburgh
I run the high-field NMR facility in the Department of Chemistry at Pitt, which holds over $4M in advanced instrumentation. That covers:
- Coordinating a maintenance program that keeps every instrument running at its best, every day of the year.
- Keeping the magnets cold, which is the first priority of all — weekly liquid nitrogen fills and quarterly liquid helium fills across all nine magnets.
- Training anyone at Pitt who wants to use the facility, from any department. Users outside chemistry have access to the walk-on spectrometers (300, 400, and 500 MHz).
- Advising faculty, post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduates on the design and planning of solution NMR experiments.
- Providing NMR spectroscopic analysis services to regional academic and industrial users.
My research applies solution and solid-state NMR spectroscopy to interdisciplinary problems in chemistry and materials science — the structure and dynamics of ionic liquids, molecular transport, CO2 capture, polymers, and catalysis. We also use theoretical calculations to complement what the NMR tells us. See my research page for more, or my publications for the full list.
The University produced this short film about the facility and the work we do in it.
- Invited reviews. Two commissioned review articles on the NMR of ionic liquids, including a 27-page single-author review in Progress in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (2022).
- Editorial work. Associate Editorial Board member of Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry (2016–2022) and guest editor of two special issues, on the NMR of ionic liquids and on solid-state NMR in materials science. Referee for 39 journals. See professional service.
- Facility growth. Grew the NMR facility from four aging spectrometers to nine modern instruments, spanning 300–700 MHz plus a 500 MHz wide-bore solid-state system.
- Instrument investment. Secured funding and negotiated the 2025 purchase of a new 600 MHz spectrometer, saving the University over half a million dollars, and in 2026 funded and installed a broadband probe that opens the 700 MHz to the full range of NMR-active nuclei.
- Helium conservation. Designed and completed the project connecting all nine magnets to a helium recovery system, conserving a non-renewable resource.
- Teaching beyond Pitt. Twenty-eight NMR and solid-state NMR short courses, workshops, and invited talks since 2013 — PITTCON, the Eastern Analytical Symposium, US Pharmacopeia, Penn State, India, and Brazil. See teaching & outreach.
- In the media. A five-part video interview series for Spectroscopy magazine, and an interview with ACS Chemical & Engineering News on the future of laboratories. See professional service.
- Mentoring. Advised post-docs, graduate, undergraduate, and high-school researchers, and provide NMR support to researchers at Duquesne, Chatham, Carnegie Mellon, and other regional institutions.
See my research and publications for details, teaching & outreach for courses and mentoring, professional service for editorial and review work, or leadership for twenty years of building and running the NMR facility.