Group Leader

Mr. Kanai Shah is the Director or Research at RMD, Inc., and the Group Leader of the Material Science Group. His group designs scintillators, semiconductors, ceramics and Large Area Avalanche Photodiodes (LA-APD) for advanced X-ray, gamma ray and neutron detectors. Under Mr. Shah's leadership, the Material Science Group is designing state of the art detectors to meet the demanding needs of the next generation of medical imaging, medical diagnostics, small animal research, homeland security, nondestructive testing and nuclear particle physics markets.

Mr. Shah joined RMD in 1985 and was involved in a program aimed at stabilizing HgI₂ low energy X-ray sensors for NASA. After that program, he went on to manage a variety of research projects focused on semiconductor and scintillator detectors. He has led research in scintillator material development projects including: PbI₂, HgI₂, TlBr, TlBr_xI_1-x, ZnTe, CdTe, CdZnTe, and BP.

From May 1992 to October 1993, Mr. Shah worked as a Device Engineer at Canberra Industries in Meriden, CT. At Canberra, he developed a proprietary new contact for germanium detectors, and was able to improve yield for an existing process for HPGe detectors from 20 percent to about 70 percent. He also worked on developing high purity silicon detectors.

Mr. Shah rejoined RMD in November 1993 as the Director of Research and the Group Leader of the Materials Group. Mr. Shah has overseen the development of new semiconductors and scintillators both in single crystal and thick film forms. His current areas of interest include the development of new detector materials and the investigation of high resolution X-ray and gamma ray detectors with imaging capabilities.

Mr. Shah has been the principal investigator on many grants from numerous agencies including: the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. He is the author of over 70 technical articles and has co-authored several chapters in prominent physics textbooks. Mr. Shah has reviewed articles for the IEEE, NIM, and MRS journals, and has been an invited speaker at both national and international conferences. In addition, he is a regular reviewer for Department of Energy programs.

Mr. Shah earned a Bachelors of Engineering degree in Chemical Engineering in 1983 at Gujarat University in Gujarat, India where he ranked first in his graduating class. He received a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Lowell in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1987. The focus of his master's thesis was the mass transfer of carbon dioxide through catheters used in implantable drug delivery systems.