“Augmenting Writing Skills for Articulating Research (AWSAR)” has been an initiative by Department of Science and Technology (DST) that aims to disseminate Indian research stories among the masses in an easy to understand and interesting format to a common man.
SSSIHL Research Fellow’s Popular Science Story Wins an AWSAR Award
In order to bridge the yawning communication gap that exists at the science-society interface, Ph.D. Scholars and Post-Doctoral Fellows (PDFs) in Science and Technology (S&T) streams are encouraged to write popular science articles and to participate in a national competition. DST had received overwhelming responses from various research labs in the country, capturing and revealing the message of science in an easy-to-understand but at the same time interesting format, to connect with the masses.
In this background, Sri Seemesh Bhaskar, DST-Inspire Research Fellow, STAR Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning has been selected to the award, winning a prize of ₹10,000/- along with a Certificate of Appreciation. A panel consisting of eminent science communicators and scientists, constituted by DST, has evaluated the entries. It is a proud moment that, in more than 5000+ participants, Sri Seemesh Bhaskar has secured a position within the top 100 for his popular science story entitled “Unity in Diversity- a Moonshot to Disruptive Innovations”, transliterated on the recently published* article: ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2020, 12, 30, 34323–34336. The award ceremony was streamed live on YouTube, Facebook, and India Science websites on National Science Day, February 28th, 2021.
For more on the Award: https://www.awsar-dst.in/results-2020
*Read the Paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.0c07515
Research Scholar Honoured by ARCI, DST – Bags First Prize
Ms. Sai Kiran M, a doctoral research scholar with Department of Chemistry, SSSIHL, Anantapur won the first prize for her talk entitled “Self- assembled PVA -Based for Effective Defluoridation of Ground Water”* at the Science Technology Innovation Talks (STIN 2021) event, streamed on a virtual platform on 25-26 February 2021.
Organized by the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy & New Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad to commemorate the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) on National Science Day, Young Research Fellows from across India were invited to present their research work in the form of a 3-minute presentation in the area of Material Science and Engineering at STIN 2021.
A total of 68 shortlisted participants from premier Institutes like IIScs, IITs, CSIR labs, and Central universities presented their work on 25 February, 2021 to a panel of eminent professors and senior scientists, who chose the winners based on the novelty, scientific and technical content and their relevance to societal needs.
Ms. Sai Kiran was awarded the first prize for her presentation which included prize money of 10,000 INR and a Certificate of Appreciation signed by the Chairman of the Organizing committee Dr. P.K Jain and the Director ARCI,
Dr. G. Padmanabham.
Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning (SSSIHL) congratulates Ms. Sai Kiran for the above-mentioned recognition and for making the University proud.
* Reference: Mani, Sai Kiran, Rajni Bhandari, and Anita Nehra. “Self-assembled cylindrical Zr (IV), Fe (III) and Cu (II) impregnated polyvinyl alcohol-based hydrogel beads for real-time application in fluoride removal.” Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects 610 (2021): 125751. DOI:10.1016/j.colsurfa.2020.127571
Read the Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927775720313443?via%3Dihub
Also view a news report published in 02, March 2021 Hyderabad edition of The Hindu: https://bit.ly/3soGPlj
Langmuir publication – Femtomolar Detection of Spermidine
Noble metals such as gold and silver behave contrastively at nano-dimensions. While silver intrinsically enhances the luminescence of a fluorophore (a fluorescent chemical compound that can re-emit light upon light excitation), gold quenches the same.
In an attempt to overcome this inevitable loss in plasmon-coupled emission platform, Dr. Sai Sathish Ramamurthy, Asst. Professor, STAR Labs and Dr. S Prathap Chandran, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Chemistry, SSSIHL have come up with novel hybridized plasmon engineering methodology.
The research group have innovated a translation application using a cell phone camera to detect spermidine in aqueous samples. Further research could help realize the detection of spermidine in biological specimens as well.
Spermidine is an indispensable natural polyamine compound – found in ribosomes & living tissues, having various metabolic functions within organisms, required for maintaining cellular homeostasis in every living organism. Apart from exhibiting anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, this molecule significantly affects several biological processes including tissue regeneration, cardioprotective and neuroprotective effects, regulation of translation, cell growth and proliferation, DNA and RNA stabilization, and enzymatic modulation to name a few.
The group have published a paper entitled: Femtomolar Detection of Spermidine using Au Decorated SiO Nanohybrid on Plasmon-Coupled Extended Cavity Nanointerface: A Smartphone based Fluorescence Dequenching approach.
Read the paper in ACS Langmuir: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b03869
#SSSIHLChemistry #SSIHLCRIF #STARlabResearch #hybridized plasmons #femtomolarsensing
Disruptive Innovations to Lower Healthcare Costs
Prof. Govind Rao, Director, Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) and Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA delivered a guest lecture on Disruptive Innovations to Lower Healthcare Costs at SSSIHL on 30 Jan 2020. The lecture was attended by students and faculty of the University, as well as doctors from Sri Sathya Sai Higher Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Prasanthigram.
Prof. Rao highlighted the growing cost of healthcare in the United States, costing close to $4 Trillion per annum while 71% of world population lives on a $10 per capita per day income. Under these circumstances, where medicare is beyond the reach of the masses, the Center for Advanced Center Technology (CAST) has developed next generation bio-manufacturing technology with the ability to manufacture protein-based therapeutics at the point-of-care. Under Prof. Rao’s able guidance, cell-free systems have been used to produce lifesaving biologics in under 8 hours. His talk centered around the application of non-invasive sensors, minimizing pain and removing infection risks especially for vulnerable infants in neonatal care.
He also spoke about the development of low-cost cardboard incubators for new born babies that is currently in clinical trials in India. Overall, he highlighted the application of sensor technology in reducing healthcare costs and reducing disparity by making disruptive and innovative low-cost devices for use in low resource settings.
They young students and researchers greatly benefitted from the talk and had a chance to interact with him after the lecture.
https://cast.umbc.edu/people/govind/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03455-x
#SSSIHLResearch #SSSIHL
Amalgamation of plasmonic and photonic crystal-based sensing technologies
Dr. Sai Sathish Ramamurthy, Asst. Professor, STAR Lab, Dept. of Chemistry, SSSIHL in collaboration with Dr. Shivakiran Bhaktha B N, Photonics Lab, IIT Kharagpur and alumnus SSSIHL, have been working on amalgamation of plasmonic and photonic crystal-based sensing technologies.
The novelty of this work is the creation of a highly precise platform for the detection (1 femtomolar) of environmentally hazardous aluminium ions in drinking water. In common parlance, it is not just the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack, but even the eye of the needle. This is done using nanocavities; ‘hot-spots’ as they are called.
Under their supervision, Sri Seemesh Bhaskar, Dr. S Venkatesh (SSSIHL) and Mrs. Pratyusha Das (IIT Kharagpur), have theoretically and experimentally investigated electromagnetic modes supported by photonic crystals in different nano-architectures.
Read the paper published in ACS The Journal of Physical Chemistry C: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b11092
#SSSIHLResearch #SSSIHLChemistry #photoniccrystal#femtomolarsensing
Periodic Table @ 150
The #periodictable of elements – the backbone of Chemistry – turns 150! Back then, a Russian Chemist and inventor, Dmitri Mendeleev, formulated the Periodic Law, and his farsighted version brought us the Periodic Table. Most of us have fond (or in many cases, not so fond) memories of trying to memorize this table when we were in school.
As part of this celebration, the Department of Chemistry, SSSIHL arranged a talk by Prof. V Chandrasekhar, Centre Director, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad, on 8 August 2019. He spoke on the topic, Periodic Table @150: Some Stories.
He started with historical anecdotes of Mendeleev and his contributions to the development of the periodic table. He elaborated on why we need a periodic table and why (at all) do we need to establish a relationship between the elements? The answer lies in the fact that we use many — if not all the elements — as part of our daily lives.
Pluto stated that all matter is made of elements (earth, fire, air, water and space), and thus began the journey of science. Chemistry, on the other hand, began with the alchemist’s search for the philosopher’s stone to convert base metals into gold. In this regard, there were many alchemists, such as Henning Brand (who discovered Phosphorus – flask glowing in the dark), Robert Boyle (who gave the gas laws) and Lavoisier (who quantified science by coming up with the law of mass conservation).
In time, there were many elements and a growing number of attempts on finding a relationship between the elements, starting with Dobereiner triads, Newland’s octave and finally Mendeleev. Against all the odds, he completed his education and went on to develop a periodic table that was first arranged, based on the atomic mass of elements. He not only arranged the elements into a table but also predicted the possibility of the discovery of new elements by proposing gaps between the existing elements. Then, Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay discovered the noble gases and Chadwick discovered the isotopes.
The final piece of the puzzle in the periodic table, as we know of today, was solved by Henry Moseley, who arranged the periodic table by atomic number and then several gaps were filled later by the discovery of more elements of the periodic table by scientists such as Seaborg. The talk looked at the development of the periodic table from the layman’s perspective, offering a fusion of science and history. It was delightful, insightful and invigorating.
#SSSIHLChemistry #SSSIHL