Dhananjay Ravat College of Arts and Sciences
Dr. Dhananjay Ravat is a Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Ravat's research interests include geophysics and planetary sciences. He has conducted research on topics pertaining to exploration of the earth and planets with gravity and magnetic fields, solid-earth geophysics, tectonics, and environmental geophysics. Dr. Ravat has also participated in the development of World Digital Magnetic Anomaly Maps and the standards for the North American Gravity anomaly database. Throughout his career, he has published over 100 reviewed publications and mentored over 20 undergraduates, 12 graduate students, 8 post-docs, and 4 Ph.D. students from universities across the world.
In the last year, Dr. Ravat has mentored three undergraduate and four graduate students. One of his undergraduate mentees noted, "Dr. Ravat was instrumental in encouraging me to pursue my interests in physics despite adversity. He has been a wonderful research mentor; I have presented research half a dozen times under his guidance and have gained incredibly valuable insight into the process of a research career." Mentors truly make a difference! Dr. Ravat explains that one of the best things about being a mentor is "when students are struggling with studies and research sparks their interest and turns them around and improves their engagement." He also notes that for students who are already doing well in their studies "it is most rewarding to see them become independent thinkers in a few years." While he did not have many research opportunities as an undergraduate student, he did have a lot of good role models who inspired him.
Dr. Ravat believes that strong students undergraduate student researchers are persistent, have a drive to discover things, and are always wondering "what if". He explained, "Learning to do research takes a lot of hard work, time management, and work ethic." Dr. Ravat's advice to students considering undergraduate research is to know what drives you and why are you considering doing a research project, "Most research projects can be interesting and rewarding if one likes the subject matter and have the drive to learn new things; some projects are lab oriented, some theoretical or computational, and some are field-work oriented." He also encourages students to "learn not to accept the first results and find different ways of cross-checking them."
Dr. Ravat's passion for research and his work reflects greatly on his mentees. We greatly appreciate the outstanding mentoring Dr. Dhananjay Ravat provides and the difference he is making for so many UK undergraduates. We are pleased to recognize Dr. Ravat's dedication this week as our Faculty Mentor of the Week.