Reduction in silver loss in copper electro-fining process. The ore used for copper manufacturing contains precious metals like silver. The project involves study of the existing industrial process in detail. Identify the reasons for the silver loss and provide solutions and create a proof of concept in the lab to taken for commercialization.
Sustainability through circular economy in foundry sand reclamation. The project deals with involves process intensification in the foundry sand reclamation process developed by IITB. The objective is to reduce carbon and water footprint without compromising the cost-effectiveness.
Our group has recently introduced a new class of materials, comprising polyethylene chains covalently grafted to a layered inorganic substrate (See: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsapm.3c00649). This novel material, that we refer to as PE-clay, has remarkable and unprecedented properties. For example, it exhibits adhesion to metal surfaces with strengths that are over 100X that for regular polyethylene, even at an inorganic loading of less than 2%. Further, the modulus of this material is significantly higher than that for polyethylene of comparable crystallinity.
Data-driven machine learning models are increasingly being used to generate stable materials which form the basis for rational design of novel catalysts and battery materials. These models are trained on a database of stable materials computed using first principles methods. Based on this database, architectures such as the variational auto-encoder, generative adversarial networks and (more recently) the transformer learn an implicit probability distribution. This distribution is used to decides if a given material is stable.
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are special proteins without a fixed 3D shape, like wiggly strings that flex to do key jobs in cells, but in diseases like Parkinson's (alpha-synuclein) or Alzheimer's (tau), mutations make them clump into toxic tangles harming brain cells. This project uses molecular dynamics (MD) simulations—computer models that mimic atomic wiggles over time—to watch how these changes spread along the protein chain, spotting "switches" that trigger clumping.
Intrinsically disordered proteins are proteins that lack a stable three dimensional structure. In many cases they control vital cellular processes or have been associated with disease. In this project, we use computer simulations to study a protein called IAPP that clumps up harmfully in type 2 diabetes, killing the cells that make insulin. Lacking fixed structure, IAPP's flexible conformations shift with mutations toward fibril-prone states that block insulin from working properly.
BTP
Developing an understanding the effect of microplastics on cellular function is important. This project will involve preparing microplastics from common commercial polymers (such as polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and polyesters) and their thorough characterization. One aspect of this project will be to come up with a protocol to generate fluorescently tagged microplastics to allow them to be tracked as they are ingested by cells. Subsequently, cells will be exposed to these microplastics and their response will be studied.
About the project:
Congratulations to Avishek Kumar, PhD student at the IITB–Monash Research Academy, supervised by Prof. P. Sunthar (IIT Bombay) and Prof. J. Ravi Prakash (Monash University). His groundbreaking research introducing the persistent-worm model for the mesoscopic simulation of wormlike micelles (WLMs) has been featured on the cover of the Journal of Rheology.