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Gangadhar J. Sanjayan

Prof. Gangadhar J. Sanjayan is a Chief Scientist and Professor of Chemistry at CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. He received his PhD from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, UK. His research interests are in the area of molecular self-assembly, nature-inspired materials, smart/functional polymers and medicinal chemistry. Over the years, his group developed diverse classes of self-assembling systems with intriguing structural features and application scopes in polymer/material sciences. Sanjayan has published several seminal papers in prestigious journals such as the Journal of American Chemical Society, ChemComm and others and has several patents to his credit. He is a recipient of the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, among several other coveted awards.

In the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project, Prof. Sanjayan is focusing on developing supramolecular polymers and bio-inspired materials carrying de novo designed self-assembling bifacial G-C nucleobase building blocks and investigating their structural features and properties. Supramolecular polymers as a class of structurally intricate macromolecules are growing in prominence, owing primarily to their immense potential in applied research and practical utility in everyday life.

Manjusha V. Shelke

Dr. Manjusha Shelke is working as Principal Scientist in the Physical and Materials Chemistry division of CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. Dr. Shelke is also an Associate Professor at AcSIR. She has completed her Ph.D. in chemistry from CSIR-Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute, Bhopal in 2006. She has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Institut d’électronique de Microélectronique et de anotechnologie, CNRS, Lille, France during 2007-08 sponsored by Embassy of France in India. She has been awarded a visiting scholarship in chemical sciences by Indo-US Science and Technology Forum and worked at Rice University, Houston, TX, USA during 2013-14. She has been elected as Kavli Fellow by National Academy of Sciences, USA in 2015 and as a Fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Sciences in 2018. In 2021 Science and Engineering Research Board of Govt. of India awarded her with SERB-POWER Fellowship. She has been invited as a Visiting Faculty at Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) academy since 2020 and on the research advisory board of Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Bhopal in 2022. She is a materials’ chemist and her research interests are in the development of high energy electrode materials for storage devices like rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors. She has published 70 journal articles, eight book chapters, six patents granted and 10 invention disclosures filed. 11 of her students graduated with PhD. In 2021, she has founded a spin-off company “Rechargion Energy Pvt. Ltd.” to take research from her lab to the market.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence research fellow, Dr. Shelke aims to understand the failure mechanisms in Lithium-Sulphur rechargeable battery cells, address them with interfacial engineering strategies and develop a working prototype with reasonable cycle life and high specific energy.