Publications

R&D Areas/Projects

• Microfluidic Synthesis of Vesicles/Liposomes Liposomes or Lipid Vesicles have been shown to be an excellent carriers of drug compounds. With the size chosen appropriately, they can naturally target cancerous tissue. With additional special molecules attached to their surface, more specific tissue-binding interaction can be achieved to deliver drug effectively.

  Our group is experimenting with various ways to produce liposomes and encapsulate drug molecules. In particular we are developing devices that can form liposomes in-situ, thus overcoming the common difficulties of the storage and stability associated with liposomal delivery agents. These in-situ devices will be designed to be used at a clinical level, where streams of lipid and drug mix in a particular fashion to form liposomes and efficiently encapsulate the drug.

  The project involves understanding the forces that govern the self-assembly of the lipid molecules and aims to achieve a reproducible control on the size of the liposomes.

• Polymer Solution Dynamics Polymer solution dynamics forms the basis of understanding the dynamics of long chain molecules in solution or melt form. Understanding their flow behaviour, also known as Rheology, is important for industrial processes as welll as to understand the complex motion undergone by biologically relevant molecules such as DNA and proteins.

  One of the projects involves isolating DNA molecules from specialised strains of bacteria E. coli. This way we are able to get a polymeric liquid of various concentrations of a mono-disperse molecular weight. We have characterised the so-called theta temperature of DNA in Tris-EDTA buffer solution, and also mapped its solvent quality in good solvents to the theoretical solvent quality parameter used in theories of polymer physics. With this it is hoped that the dynamics of DNA can be predicted from first principles using analytical and molecular simulation methods.

  In a related project we are also looking to understand the dynamics of polymeric liquids in semi-dilute solution, using a specially developed Brownian Dynamics code (MMTK) that can handle long range hydrodynamic interactions.

  An useful method of simulating polymer dynamics in confined geometries is the Fluctuating Lattice Boltzmann method (FLBM). We have recently suggested a variation to the conventional FLBM technique that can achieve twice the computational speed.

• Electrospinning of Polymeric Liquids Electrospinning is a novel technique of producing fibres in which threads of a polymeric liquid are pulled from a spinneret using electrical force fields. The pulled threads undergo a instability transition to a whipping state combined with reduction in the diameter. As the solvent evaporates, the polymer separates out to form a fibre.

  This project involves understanding of the dynamics of the initial stage before the whipping instability commences. We use a combination of scaling arguments and experimental measurements using high speed videography to elucidate the mechanisms.

• Climate Modelling Aerosol dispersion patterns in atmosphere can have a significant effect on the solar radiation reaching the earth surface, and can thereby affect the local climate, especially the monsoonal rainfall. We propose to study the patterns of aerosol dispersions using simple scaling models of local atmospheric circulation (Indian region) validated by means of more accurate general circulation models and actual measured data.

Patents

PhD TA Topics