Prabhat Tripathy, a research scientist, has been working at INL since 2010 in the areas of spent nuclear fuel treatment, energy-efficient manufacturing, and recycling of critical materials. He has extensive research experience in materials electrochemistry, molten salt technology, chemical metallurgy of primary and secondary resources, synthesis and characterization of high temperature metals/materials and materials recycling. The scientific underpinning of his research work has been to understand materials and develop technologies to effectively utilize them for commercial exploitations. Some of his notable contributions include development of (1) monolithic inert anode materials for used nuclear fuel treatment and production of metals directly from metal oxides (2) a new process flowsheet for the production of vanadium metal for the fabrication of self-powered beta detector (3) an entirely new electrolyte system to electroplate aluminum on structural steels for corrosion mitigation and prevention of hydrogen embrittlement (4) a modified hydriding-cumdehydriding process to recycle spent magnets and (5) a fabrication process for near-net-shape components directly from oxide intermediates by a novel electrochemical approach. To date, he has been a technical lead on thirteen out of nineteen sponsored research projects at INL. He is the technical lead on a program to prepare rare earth alloys from the mixed oxide constituents, currently funded by the Critical Materials Institute, Advanced Manufacturing Office, DOE. He was also the technical lead for the Inert Anode Technology program at INL for used nuclear fuel reprocessing as part of a Joint Fuel Cycle Studies program – a 10-yr Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between multiple DOE national laboratories, the Republic of Korea, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna). He has also led multiple Laboratory-Directed Research and Development activities at INL involving materials recycling including nuclear materials.

To date, he has five issued (US) patents. Exclusive licenses pertaining to four of his 2 technologies have been purchased by an Arizona-based company for deployment in the mining industry. Besides, he holds about 120 publications. and an Adjunct Professorship position in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Utah. He has performed collaborative research and development programs with multiple researchers and academics from U.S. national laboratories and universities.

• Molten salt science and technology as applicable to preparation of novel materials, materials recycling, surface modification by electrocoating and fundamental property measurements pertaining to electrolytes and materials. 
• Materials electrochemistry.
• Chemical processing of waste materials and lean ore bodies.
• Inert anode technology.
• Materials recycling (Rare earth permanent magnets, metallic alloys and tungsten carbide scraps).
• Process metallurgy of reactive & refractory metals, rare earth elements and their compounds/alloys.
• Nuclear fuel cycle research & development.
• Energy-efficient manufacturing processes.
• Synthesis and characterization of high temperature (inorganic), nano and metallic materials. 
• Development of process flow sheets for the recovery of reactive and refractory metals from their primary/secondary resources, waste materials and scraps.