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.

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.