Profile

I was born and brought up in a small village in India. I studied in Arizona state university (USA) and Stockholm university (Sweden) before I moved to Edinburgh University, UK. I live in Bonnyrigg (just outside Edinburgh) with my wife.  My favorite pizza is Papa Johns🍕. I love weekend road trips with my friends. I love experimenting with cooking. I can spend a Sunday watching thriller films one after another. The Big Bang Theory is one of my favorite television series. I recently watched STRANGER THINGS.

In the laboratory I mostly do pressure cooking (synthesis at high pressure and temperature). Do you know pressure = force/area; smaller area = higher pressure; The high heel can exert more than 15 times the pressure of an elephant’s foot. I use various high pressure apparatus; one of them is called diamond anvil cell (DAC) where I squeeze solids between two tiny diamonds (diameter of diamonds = 0.6 mm; how thick is you hair?). Diamond is the hardest material, and they are transparent to light and X-ray.  I can reach 100000 times or even higher pressure than atmosphere. Materials behave differently with pressure. This makes my research interesting. I can see changes in my solids under microscope. Sometime I see color changes or texture changes. I then use X-ray to study the structure of my compound. X-rays are one kind of light with much shorter wavelength (0.01 – 10 nm; remember our visible light is 380-740 nm). You probably heard about X-ray imaging when someone had fractures; but I use X-ray for scattering. X-ray diffract (scatter) from atomic planes and produce spots/rings in regular gaps (like stars in the sky). If I make something crystalline (like sugar, salt, sand) I see sharp spots, otherwise I see rings. All different solids produce different patterns, and therefore I can identify whether I made something new or I made a known compound. You heard about double helix structure of DNA; it has been solved using the X-ray technique more than 60 years ago. I will you tell you the story of my research; I work on explosives like TNT; and also small molecular experimental cancer drug.

Another part of my research is purely for developing countries (such as India). I am involved in a research where pollutants (such as bacterias) in water can be killed using sunlight and a catalyst (this process is called photocatalysis). I study the efficiency of my catalyst using UV-visible spectroscopy. I am also involved in another research where I am planning to make a solar cooker where sunlight can be stored in a phase change material during the day; and at night all the stored heat can be used for cooking. I am happy to discuss in detail if you want to know more.

I try to spend mornings in the laboratory and afternoons at my office.  In the laboratory I spend most of the time doing my own experiments and also supervise undergrad and PhD students as required. In the office I spend time analysing the data, writing my research in a short, concise story that can be submitted to a scientific journal. I take occasional coffee breaks. At least three or more times a year,  I visit Rutherford Appleton laboratory for challenging experiments. After I publish my result in scientific journals, I try to find an international conference, and present my discovery. I already visited nearly 25 countries in last ten years.