Sergey V. Ushakov received PhD in Mineralogy in 1998 from St. Petersburg State University. From 1999 to 2020 he held research positions in Navrotsky's group at UC Davis. In 2020 he joined ASU SMS as a research professor.

Structural characterization and thermodynamic measurements of natural minerals and synthetic materials; determination of their structure-stability relationships at relevant temperature, pressure & chemical conditions.

Kalarickal's research focuses on epitaxial growth and device engineering of wide and ultra-wide band gap semiconductors for application in next generation power switching and RF/mm-wave electronics.