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Vikram Rao

Executive Director
Research Triangle Energy Consortium

Areas of Expertise:

Liquid Fuels, Natural Gas

Additional Areas of Expertise:

Biomass to energy, shale gas and oil, R&D, energy security

Vikram Rao is Executive Director, Research Triangle Energy Consortium www.rtec-rtp.org, a non-profit in energy founded by Duke University, North Carolina State University, RTI International and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Its mission is to illuminate national energy priorities, and those of the world by extension, and to catalyze research to address these priorities.

Dr. Rao advises venture capitalist Energy Ventures AS, and firms BioLargo Inc., Global Energy Talent Ltd., Biota Technology Inc, Eastman Chemicals Inc and Integro Earth Fuels Inc.. He retired as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Halliburton Company in 2008 and followed his wife to Chapel Hill, NC, where she is on the UNC faculty. Later that year he took his current position. He also serves on the North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission as Chairman.

Dr. Rao’s book Shale Gas: the Promise and the Peril was released in 2012 by RTI Press and can be found at www.rti.org/shalegasbook. It is written for general audiences and is intended to inform on the heated debate on fracturing for shale gas. The revised edition will be released in August, 2015.

Dr. Rao holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India, along with a master’s degree and a doctorate in engineering from Stanford University. He is the author of more than 50 publications and has been awarded 40 US patents and foreign analogs.

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