Start
Feb 16, 2017 - 17:00
End
Feb 16, 2017 - 18:00
Venue
Rm. No. 118 Ground floor Chemical Engg. Dept.
Event Type
Speaker
Dr. Nitish Nair Shell R&D Bangalore
Title
Chemputer Science: Where Discipline Meets Illusion
Abstract: The lines between engineering or science disciplines are either blurred or non-existent in the world of R&D. A topic that originates in the imperial realm of physics can easily work its way through the dominions of chemistry the kingdoms of chemical engineering and materials science take a breather in the sultanate of computer science before heading down uncharted paths. Industrial and academic research abound with such examples and rightly so because cross-pollination is the engine of evolution. This talk will focus on computing flow pathways in 3-d digitised porous media. Examples of the latter include rocks catalyst particles and battery electrodes whose structures resemble complex mazes. While the principles of fluid flow may be derived from physics and chemical engineering estimating connectivity in large labyrinthine media requires efficient data structures and pathfinding algorithms. And so this talk is not so much the final solution as an open discussion of a research problem.Brief Biography: Nitish Nair is a chemical engineer with degrees from BITS Pilani University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and MIT. He joined GM R&D after a postdoc at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Nitish currently works at Shell R&D in Bangalore after a couple of years in GM.