Prof Madhavi 's research interests is in synthesis, fabrication and application of nanoscale materials/architectures in improving the performance of electrochemical energy storage devices such as advanced lithium ion batteries, supercapacitors, sodium ion batteries, multivalent aqueous Zn / Al batteries. She is also the cluster director (energy storage) at Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N) and Director of SCARCE (Singapore-CEA alliance for research in Circular economy), a joint lab, in collaboration with French Alternative energies and atomic energy commission (CEA, France) focusing on recycling of e-waste. She works on new hydrometallurgical approaches in sorting, extraction, separation of elements from spent lithium ion batteries and to reuse them She has worked with several national and international companies on the energy storage domain such as BMW (Germany), Johnson Matthey (UK), Energizer (USA), Elbit systems (Israel), JNC (Japan) and Bosch (Singapore/Germany), Dou Yee (Singapore), Durapower (Singapore). Madhavi has published over 300 high impact research papers and has 22 patents. Her research work has been cited worldwide with a total citations over 15,800 and Hirch (H)-index = 69. She has been featured among an elite group of researchers worldwide who have been recognized for exceptional research performance demonstrated by the production of multiple highly cited research papers which rank in the top 1% by citations for field in year 2018 in Web of Science. The list, which is compiled by Clarivate Analytics, is derived from the academic and research communities who have acknowledged the influence of the research contributions
She has been awarded the L'Oreal for women in science national fellowshipsand was also one of the three “Great Women of Our Time” in the Science and Technology Category by Singapore Women’s Weekly Magazine. She is the recipient of prestigious NRF investigatorship award (2017) awarded to top scientists in Singapore by National research foundation (NRF). She has won the “Nanyang Excellence in Research” award (NTU) in 2014. She has also won the “Nanyang Excellence in Teaching” award (NTU) twice both in 2012 and 2017. In addition she has won the teacher of the year school award (NTU) twice in 2013 and 2016. She is one of the 10 young scientist worldwide (future leaders forum) awarded at the Science and Technology forum, 2011, Kyoto(Japan). She graduated with Masters from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT, Madras/Chennai, India) and did her PhD in National University of Singapore (Singapore).