About myself

I completed my masters in material engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, India with an academic excellence award. My passion in nanomaterials was kindled while carrying out my masters project in stimuli responsive nanomaterials. For obtaining a glimpse of how the industry and commercialization world functions with respect to research, I moved to Thailand for a 2-year industry research tenure in materials. It was where I gained experience in staff supervision, R&D project and team management, product development and commercialization. Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia was my next home where I carried out my doctorate work under an Australian Research Council Discovery Project ARC DP1094205 “multimodal imaging probes” working with A/Prof. Peter Fredericks and A/Prof. Idriss Blakey. This helped me to attain a PhD (in Chemistry specializing in nanotechnology and optical spectroscopy) in 2.75 years graduating in September, 2014 with multiple journal articles, numerous international conference participations and multiple scholarships and awards with the “Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award” being the most prominent one. Following this, I worked as a research fellow in Australia for a couple of months on a water desalination project. I then moved to Europe and joined a postdoctoral position (EU FP7 UNION) in Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat (LMU), Munich, Germany in nanoplasmonics and photonics in the group of Prof. Jochen Feldmann with Dr. Jessica Rodriguez-Fernandez. Getting more engrossed in nanoplasmonics and wanting to expand my knowledge in sensor device implementation, I started my next stint with Prof. Laura Lechuga in nanobiosensors for clinical and point-of-care devices. Currently, I am working with Prof. Nick Stone in University of Exeter, UK in developing SERS NPs and using them for deep tissue cancer detection by Raman SESORS technique.