Bacterial Nanowires Archives

Rojalin Padhan

Ms. Rojalin Padhan is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Her doctoral thesis focuses on phenomenological implications of beyond the Standard Model theories, the theory of neutrino mass generation, and dark matter. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed international journals, and she has presented at several national and international conferences.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from Gangadhar Meher College, Sambalpur, Odisha, and a master’s degree in Physics from Sambalpur University, Odisha. She has qualified in examinations such as the JEST, Joint CSIR-UGC JRF-NET, and GATE. She also holds a Diploma in Advanced Physics from the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Apart from Physics, she has an interest in social work. She enjoys spending time on the beach and in the mountains, as well as gardening. She loves to travel to different places and to meet people of various cultures.

As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, she is exploring the potential reach of the proposed multi-TeV Muon Collider to search for beyond the Standard Model particles. She is primarily working on collider signatures of models that predict dark matter candidates and address the origin of the observed neutrino masses.

Aditya Vijaykumar

Mr. Aditya Vijaykumar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Astrophysical Relativity group at ICTS-TIFR in Bengaluru, working on various aspects of physics, astrophysics, cosmology with gravitational waves. Before joining ICTS-TIFR, he was an undergraduate student at BITS-Pilani, where he received a dual degree in Physics and Mechanical Engineering in 2018.

As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, Vijaykumar plans to work on understanding gravitational-wave observations from the perspective of cosmological large-scale structure. The advantage of this approach is two-fold: one can confirm existing cosmological inferences from other probes, and independently understand formation environments and mechanisms of the detected gravitational-wave events.

Mr. Vijaykumar is also active in the Bengaluru theatre circuit, as a part of the theatre company StageCraft. Most recently, he was the co-producer of ZOOMED IN!, an online theatre production featuring actors situated across two time zones. He also is an ardent lover of films and runs a film-analysis podcast called Cut to Scene! with a friend.

Shreya Sarkar

Dr. Shreya Sarkar is working as a guest researcher at the GNSS Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. She has worked in collaboration with different space agencies across the globe and published several peer-reviewed papers in reputed national and international journals. She obtained scholarships from the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and ISU, France. In 2019, Dr. Sarkar was the only Indian who received a grant from UNOOSA for presenting her research work at the UN/Fiji Workshop on the Applications of Global Navigation Satellite Systems. At this workshop, she also acted as the rapporteur for one of the sessions. She received the prestigious Quarterly Franklin Membership from the London Journals Press. She is also a member of the Women in Aerospace network, Europe; the Space Generation Advisory Council, Austria; and an editorial board member of two Scientific International Open Access Journals.

After pursuing her Ph.D. in physics, Dr. Sarkar obtained her second master’s in space science from the International Space University (ISU), France. She has been teaching physics for the past 16 years at a government sponsored school in West Bengal. Earlier, she worked as a guest lecturer in different graduate, postgraduate, and engineering colleges in West Bengal. She actively organizes science fairs, science seminars, and visits to university research laboratories. As a science teacher, Dr. Sarkar strives to inspire students in science education. To this end, she is conducting virtual space tours for Indian students visiting the central campus of ISU, France and is mentoring her students’ research work on UN’s sustainable goals.

Through her participation in the Fulbright TEA program, Dr. Sarkar hopes to achieve her vision of building a global teacher network. She aims to utilize her insights from the program to create an all-inclusive joyful learning experience for the all-round development of students. She also wants to further her work of including space education in the school curriculum.

Jayesh Sonwane

Dr. Jayesh Manohar Sonawane obtained his Ph D from the Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Maharashtra, under the s upervision of Prof. Prakash Chandra Ghosh and the Department of Chemistry, Monash University, Australia under the supervision of Prof. Samuel Adeloju. His Ph D research focuses on the development of conducting polymer electrodes for microbial fuel cells for power generation and wastewater treatment. Dr. Sonawane is a recipient of the prestigious “Excellence Research award 2016-18” from Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.

During his PhD , he was awarded the Shastri Fellowship from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute and went to Toronto University where he worked on Elucidation electric properties of engineered E. coli with pilA gene from Geobacter sulfurreducens, at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry. Later, he joined a postdoctoral researcher in the same department, w here he worked on a hybrid bioelectrochemical treatment process for liquid stream for the “Reinventing the Toilets” project funded by the Bill & Melinda G ates F oundation. Dr. Sonawane is currently working on a microfluidics bioelectrochemical system for understanding electroactive biofilms at Université Laval, Quebec, Canada.

Protein nanowires are a revolutionary green sustainable electronic material with unique physical, chemical, and biological properties that offer substantial advantages over other nanowire materials for biomedical and environmental sensing. The project will explore novel concepts for the large-scale separation of the wires from the cells. High throughput methods will be optimized for the fabrication of sensors specifically designed for four different analytes to demonstrate a range of high commercial relevance in clinical and environmental sensing. Dr. Sonawane is supported by the Fulbright-Nehru F ellowship and is working with scientist Prof. Derek R Lovley at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.