Dr. Neha Sardana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering (MME) at IIT Ropar. She received her BTech in MME from the IIT Roorkee in 2009, master’s in materials and manufacturing engineering from Technical University of Denmark in 2011 and a PhD in plasmonics from the International Max Planck Research Schools for Science and Technology of Nanostructures, IMPRS-MLU, Halle, Germany in 2015. After working for more than three years as a scientist at Institute of Nano Science and Technology, Mohali, Punjab and a short stint as an Assistant Professor at IIT Jodhpur, she joined IIT Ropar in 2018. Currently, she is the group leader of Nano Scale Engineering and Devices Lab at IIT Ropar. She is a member of Indian National Young Academy of Sciences (2021-26), young engineer awardee from Institute of Engineers India 2022 and young associate of Indian National Academy of Engineering 2023. She has more than 50 publications, eight book chapters, eight Indian patents and a startup on optical sensing to her credit.
During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr Sardana is focusing primarily on creating optical substrates for accurate monitoring of organochlorine agrochemicals. She will be exploring the use of MXenes to improve optical sensors when coupled with conventional plasmonic materials in an optical SPR-based sensing platform. The proposed study can be instrumental to the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology between India and the United States.