Three IISER Pune members have been selected as Fulbright-Nehru Fellows for the year 2018-19. Congratulations to all three! 

 

Mr. Prabhat Prakash, a PhD student with Dr. Arun Venkatnathan has been selected for a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship. Using modeling and simulations, his work explores material properties required for efficient energy conversion. Prabhat will be working at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA, for a period of nine months on viable alternatives to current generation liquid electrolytes for lithium ion batteries.

 

Dr. Siva Koti Sangabathuni graduated recently with a PhD from Dr. Raghavendra Kikkeri's group where he had studied carbohydrate-protein interactions. As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Scholar at University of California, Los Angeles, Siva Koti will be working on generating hydrogels that mimic extracellular matrix towards the goal of studying how motor neurons are formed from pluripotent stem cells.

 

On a Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award, Dr. Smita Chaturvedi, an independent research scientist at the institute, will employ paired ferroelectric and ferromagnetic materials to address the problem of energy dissipation in microchips. This work has potential applications in realizing ultra-low power microprocessors, storage devices, and next-generation electronics. Smita will carry out this work at Oakland University, Rochester, USA.