Govindhan Dhanaraj is the Manager of Crystal GrowthTechnologies at Advanced Renewable Energy Company (ARC Energy) atNashua, New Hampshire (USA) focusing on the growth of large sizesapphire crystals for LED lighting applications, characterizationand related crystal growth furnace development. He received his PhDfrom the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and his Master ofScience from Anna University (India). Immediately after hisdoctoral degree, Dr. Dhanaraj joined a National Laboratory,presently known as Rajaramanna Center for Advanced Technology inIndia, where he established an advanced Crystal Growth Laboratoryfor the growth of optical and laser crystals. Prior to joining ARCEnergy, Dr. Dhanaraj served as a Research Professor at theDepartment of Materials Science and Engineering, Stony BrookUniversity, NY, and also held a position of Research AssistantProfessor at Hampton University, VA. During his 25 years of focusedexpertise in crystal growth research, he has developed optical,laser and semiconductor bulk crystals and SiC epitaxial films usingsolution, flux, Czochralski, Bridgeman, gel and vapor methods, andcharacterized them using x-ray topography, synchrotron topography,chemical etching and optical and atomic force microscopictechniques. He co-organized a symposium on Industrial CrystalGrowth under the 17th American Conference on Crystal Growth andEpitaxy in conjunction with the 14th US Biennial Workshop onOrganometallic Vapor Phase Epitaxy held at Lake Geneva, WIin 2009.Dr. Dhanaraj has delivered invited lectures and also served assession chairman in many crystal growth and materials sciencemeetings. He has published over 100 papers and his researcharticles have attracted over 250 rich citations.