The Speakers

Dr. Ankona Datta's research interests are in broad fields of organic and inorganic chemistry with an emphasis on chemical biology and molecular imaging. Her group uses a range of tools pertaining to the aforementioned fields to explore new frontiers in disease detection and to understand the fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying disease. Specifically, they are interested in designing and applying novel chemical probes and sensors for imaging disease markers both in vitro and in live biological samples.

Prof. Anunay Samanta is currently a senior professor at Department of Chemistry, University of Hyderabad. His research focuses on the study of short lived (transient) species formed on photo excitation of molecular systems and materials using methods like time-resolved fluorescence, transient absorption spectroscopy, fluorescence life time imaging, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy.

Dr. Balaji J is a faculty at IISc Bengaluru. They are interested in investigating neural correlates of different forms of learning and memory. Several processes are known to be associated with memory i.e. encoding, system consolidation and retrieval. They try to understand the relationship between memories of recent and remote life time events and how they interact and influence each other. They also use techniques such as optogenetic, CLARITY, Virtual Reality and in-vivo imaging along with various behavioral paradigms in mice to address these questions.

Dr. Debanjan Bhowmik is a scientist at RGCCB Thiruvananthapuram. The ability to resolve how different nanoparticle (NP)-properties affects cellular-interactions is critical for understanding nanoconstructs’ design-activity-relationships, which can open important avenues in anti-cancer and immunotherapy research. To achieve such mechanistic understanding, he aims to test different nanoconstruct designs by visualizing the entire process of NP-cell interaction at single particle level through a semi-continuous and concerted probing. Alongside probing overall impact of a variety of nanoconstructs in cell-cultures, He also aims to focus on several different important events in nanoconstruct-cell interaction, starting from probing of NP-cell membrane binding at initial time periods to tracking of NPs inside the live-cells.

Prof. Gilad Haran is a faculty at Weizmann Institute of Science. Their research involves the application of cutting-edge spectroscopic methods on the single-molecule level, including fluorescence and Raman scattering, to study molecular dynamics. They are also interested in a diverse set of problems, from protein folding to surface plasmon excitations at metal surfaces.

Dr. Jyotishman is a faculty at the department of chemical science in TIFR Mumbai. His research field includes role of coherant motion in photoactive system using combination of steady-state electronic spectroscopy along with pump-probe electronic and time-resolved Raman spectroscopy,

Dr. Krishnananda Chattopadhyay is a Senior Principal Scientist & HOD Structural Biology & Bioinformatics at IICB Kolkata. His research areas include Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, protein folding, intrinsically disordered proteins, stability and aggregation of proteins.

Dr. Manoj Kumbhakar is working in BARC and his research interests include fast and ultrafast dynamics of electron transfer, charge transfer, and solvation processes in homogeneous and heterogeneous media; photophysics of aromatic molecules, and dynamics at the molecular level.

Dr. G. V. Pavan Kumar is a faculty at IISER Pune. He is broadly interested in research questions that are at the interface of nanophotonics and soft-matter physics.

Specifically, to address questions such as :

• how do optical/optothermal forces behave at micro- and nano-scales ?

• how do optical/optothermal forces interact with single molecules and soft (nano)matter : colloids, liquid crystals, droplets, bubbles etc. ?

• what can we learn about the structure and dynamics of molecules and soft matter using optical/optothermal forces ?

• what are the technological and biological implications of optical/optothermal force-soft matter interaction ?

Prof. Pratik Sen is currently a professor in department of chemistry, IIT Kanpur. His prime research interests are femtosecond and picosecond ultrafast laser spectroscopy, nonlinear laser spectroscopy, protein stability, binary solvent mixtures.

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Prof. Rajaram Swaminathan is a working at IIT Guhawati. Biophotonics, Fluorescence Spectroscopy, Protein Charge Transfer Spectra, Protein Aggregation, Intrinsically Disordered Proteins , Influence of Macromolecular Crowding on enzymatic reaction rates & equilibria and Big Data analysis of the Proteomes are his field of interest.

Dr. Samrat Mukhopadhyay is a faculty at IISER Mohali. The Mukhopadhyay lab utilizes a diverse range of approaches involving biophysics, biochemistry, chemical biology, cell and molecular biology, and advanced single-molecule and ultrafast spectroscopy to gain molecular insights into the conformational ensemble and dynamics, the protein hydration water, liquid-liquid phase separation, aggregation and amyloid formation from various IDPs containing low-complexity and prion-like domains.

Dr. Sarit Agasti is is a faculty fellow at JNCASR Banglore. His research focuses on organic and supramolecular chemistry, chemical biology, fluorescence imaging and super-resolution microscopy, sensing, diagnostics and drug delivery.

Dr. Shobhna Kapoor is currently an associate professor at IIT Bombay. Her research group is mainly interested in the field of molecular biophysics and chemical biology with focus on lipids and lipid-induced signalling pathways with emphasis on disease management and biotechnological applications.

Prof. Steve Presse is a faculty at Arizona state university. Two main research directions in their group are

1) They develop methods to infer models from imaging and spectroscopy data in biophysics with a recent focus on Bayesian nonparametric.

2) They are developing models to understand enzymatic and molecular motor efficiency. On the experimental front, we are exploring the role of hydrodynamics on the interaction of bacterial predators with their prey.

Prof. Sudipta Maiti, currently the professor and chair at Department of chemical science, TIFR Mumbai. His research group is trying to address various problems of protein aggregation/misfolding and neurotransmitter dynamics using various instrumentation on single molecule level.

Dr. Tahei Tahara is a chief scientist at RIKEN. They develop and apply the most advanced spectroscopic methods to study novel molecular phenomena and to elucidate the fundamental physical/chemical processes behind them. Through a deep understanding of the elementary processes of the molecular phenomena, they provide a firm basis and guiding principles for designing new materials and utilizing new properties and functions.

Dr. Vineet Kumar Rai is a faculty at IIT ISM Dhanabad. Frequency Upconversion, Spectroscopic studies of lanthanides doped materials and their applications, Optical thermometry and Laser Spectroscopy are his field of research.