Swayamdipta Bhaduri
Swayamdipta went to college for mechanical engineering at the National Institute of Technology (Durgapur) and later received his MS in fluid mechanics from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur). He then moved to Alberta for his PhD and joined the erstwhile Kumar Biomicrofluidics Laboratory at the National Institute for Nanotechnology to work on nano-scale transport phenomena of complex biological colloids such as bacterial biofilms inside highly constrained microenvironments of non-linear porous media matrices. His doctoral dissertation focused on microbiologically induced calcite precipitation mediated by Sporosarcina pasteurii. He is presently affiliated with the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin as a postdoctoral fellow and works at the interdisciplinary crossroads of engineering, physics and the life sciences. He is fascinated by flows, fields and forces at the molecular level, especially in the context of biology. His areas of expertise and research interests include biophysical soft matter physics, experimental microfluidics, bionanotechnology, hydrodynamics of complex fluids, the chemical physics of living systems, active matter, multi-phase / multi-scale / multi-field systems and high-performance imaging/characterization of advanced functional materials in bioengineering. When not pushing the frontiers of human knowledge, he likes to go out on birdwatching field trips, listen to classical music, attend the opera, practice ballroom dancing, experiment with molecular gastronomy, and volunteer for causes he cares about. Connect with him on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sway and Instagram @introstic20 (Updated July 2021)
Animesh Jain
Animesh is doing his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK. He was awarded the prestigious Harding Distinguished Postgraduate scholarship along with the Cambridge International scholarship to carry out his research. He is currently trying to propose a new framework to predict thermoacoustic oscillations for optimal design to make rocket and aircraft engines cleaner and quieter. (Updated July 2021)
Sabyasachi Sen
Sabyasachi started working in Professor Aloke Kumar’s group in May 2018 as an undergrad researcher. Here, he studied surface wave propagation in water and in polymeric solutions through a series of experiments and subsequent data analysis to gain new insights into the mechanisms by which water striders (Gerridae) communicate with each other. Currently, Sabyasachi is a Ph.D. student in Professor Abraham Stroock’s group at Cornell University, studying coupled heat and mass transfer in unsaturated porous media (e.g. leaves, soil, wick structures). The goal of his research is to develop thermal metamaterials with tunable properties and answer critical, open questions in water stress management in plants. Before joining Cornell, Sabyasachi was an undergrad at IIT Kharagpur where he studied Mechanical Engineering and pursued research in pore (micron) scale reactive flows in Professor Aditya Bandopadhyay’s group.
Indrajeet Sahu
Indrajeet is currently enrolled in a DPhil in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, UK. He is a graduate of Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi and worked as a consultant in the industry before joining the lab as a research fellow in Sep’2019.
Saakshi Donthiu
I am Saakshi S. Donthi, hailing from a small city adjacent to Bengaluru, Tumkur. A proud alumni of Department of Biotechnology (2015-2019), RIT and currently an incoming student at the Pennsylvania State University in the United states. I worked on staining protocols for spores of _Bacillus subtilis _at Aloke Sir’s lab in 2018 for about 4 months.