Shankul Vartak is a doctoral candidate in the Myerson Group in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. His research focuses on continuous crystallization with nanofiltration and impurity complexation. The goal of this work is to improve the purity of difficult-to-purify active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in a continuous process without compromising on yield. Prior to that, Shankul graduated with a B.Tech. (Hons.) in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in 2014 and obtained a Masters’ degree in Chemical Engineering Practice from MIT in 2016. Shankul’s research interests are energy-efficient separations and continuous manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. He was drawn towards them during a summer internship on organic solvent nanofiltration in the Livingston Group at Imperial College London in his sophomore year. He continued along the separations path for his following internship in the Tam Group at the University of Waterloo, and for his final year project. Shankul is looking forward to forge a career in R&D in the pharmaceutical industry.