Open positions in Dr. Chakraborty's group

Students from any discipline in Science/Engineering are encouraged to apply. In my research group all students get training to become an independent researcher in a broad research area i.e., students acquire enough expertise to do research on areas other than their thesis work - this is one of the key reasons of success of my students.

Ph.D. Positions

One Ph.D. position is for working on the anomalous diffusion problem. Random walks are used to model the diffusion process. In the usual one dimensional random walk model, the average displacement of the walker after a time t, is proportional to t1/2 . However, it is possible to have diffusion processes in which the average displacement is different - we plan to work on few such systems.

One Ph.D. position is for working on the quantum thermodynamics of small systems. Our plan is to construct a finite bath with variable temperature in which heat flows between a system and the bath environment in time evolution of an initial pure state. Baths of various numbers of oscillators areconsidered. The evolution of the pure state toward an equilibrium state will be analyzed. It is suggested that realizations of these finite-size effects may be attained in case of small molecules.


One Ph.D. position is for working on the coherence in quantum biology. The greatest challenges in achieving quantum computing is avoiding decoherence. It is of great interest that extraordinarily long decohrence time have been found in the FMO complex, which is in  green sulfur bacteria. Using computational tools we plan to understand the origin of this long decoherence time so that new systems with longer decoherence time can be predicted.

One Ph.D. position is for working on constructing effective Hamiltonian using quantum computer. The effective Hamiltonian is constructed using experimental or simulated data using optimization method. Classical optimization algorithms in often take a long time to compute and require huge amount of CPU and GPU resource. Quantum parallelism has a potential to speed optimization algorithms. We plan to leverage quantum parallelism to speed-up optimization algorithm.

One Ph.D. position is for working on the energy transfer mechanism in nano-systems. We plan to look at the mechanism of energy transfer from a dye molecule to a nano-system, using computational tools. Some of these systems have found extensive applications in sensing chemicals.

One Ph.D. position is for working on the Path Integral Methods for multi-state problems. Multi-state problems are important both in quantum and statistical mechanics, but analytically solvable models are very few. We plan to use path integral based methods for finding analytical solution of more model systems, which is considered to be analytically intractable so far.

One Ph.D. position is for working on the dynamics of spreading of infectious disease. Using simple model system it is possible to predict the dynamics of spreading of infectious diseases. We plan to apply our model for different diseases, by estimating different parameters of the model using real time data. We expect to provide the effect of different schemes for controlling spreading of the disease.


One Ph.D. position is for working on Non-adiabatic mechanism for photosynthetic energy transfer. Plan is to propose a non-adiabatic model for photosynthetic energy transfer in light harvesting antennas is proposed. The non-adiabatic model is expected to lead to enhanced vibrational oscillations on the ground electronic state of these antennas.

One Ph.D. position is for working on Exactly solvable light-matter interaction models. Plan is to propose exactly solvable quantum models for understanding light-matter interaction associated with the propagation of laser pulses through gaseous media. The goal is to provide a quantum mechanical description which can integrate Maxwell and Schr ̈odinger description and provide a means to realistically simulate nonlinear optical experiments.

One Ph.D. position is for working on Understanding the unusual properties of metamaterials. Ever since their first experimental demonstration in 2000, the interest in metamaterials has increased tremedously. Here the plan is to understand few unexpexted

 One Ph.D. position is for working on the problem of Electron Correlation in Atoms, Molecules & Quantum Dots. Two electron system is the most simplest system to study electron correlation. The doubly excited states of atoms with two outer electrons, exhibit molecule-like collective motion. A simple effective spectroscopic Hamiltonian is planned to propose for double excited two electron system. The Hamiltonian will be constructed by nonlinear least square fit of spectra of two electron systems.properties of electromagnetic metamaterials in details.

Master's  Thesis Work

One Master's thesis position is for working on the Catalytic reactions on the metal-surface. In general, it is assumed that chemical reactions takes place on single potential energy surface. If more than one surface involves in the reaction process, then it becomes difficult to calculate the reaction rate. This is quite an interesting problem and arises in the calculation of the rates of catalytic reactions happening on the metal surface.

One Master's thesis position is for working on the problem of Pi - Distortivity of Benzene. Reason for Bezene's  perfect hexagonal geometry is an interesting questions with lot of debates. Some belives that it is due to the pi-electron electron system and some other belives that it is due to the sigma electron system. Here we plan to use the effective Hamiltonian approach to  understand the origin of perfect hexagonal geometry of bengene.

One Master's thesis position is for working on the Rate Calculation using dynamical transition state theory. The already developped effective Hamiltonians can be used to understands reaction mechanism with more details than ever before. Then by using dynamical transition state theory we will be able to analyze importance of each term of the effective spectroscopic Hamiltonian.

One Master's thesis position is for working on the problem of Polymer translocation through a nanopore. Understanding the dynamics of polymer translocation process through a nanopore is an interesting area  for theoretical as well as experimental research. We will perform Brownian dynamics simulation studies of the translocation of single polymer chains across a nanosized pore of different geometries to see how ' shape of the kink' is effected by the pore geometry.


One Master's thesis position is for working on the problem of Thermal Diffusivity in Realistic Systems. Temperature and heat flow are two important quantities in understanding the heat conduction. When temperure distribution is not uniform at all points of a system, then heat flows in the direction of decreasing temperature. In general Fourier equation is used in understanding heat conduction, which is valid only for a  homogeneous isotropic solid. But in reality we have solids of different shapes, e.g., we can have a cylinder with nonuniform cylindricity - so this project aimed at working on these realistic systems.

One Master's thesis position is for working on the problem of Storing Big Image in Small Space. Now the question we would be addressing here is the following, what fraction of pixel data is necessary to regenerate the whole pixel data. The pixel data set can be easily converted to a symmetric data matrix.  Instead of storing the big data matrix one may store all eigenevalues and a smaller part of the whole matrix and one can regenerate the data matrix from eigenvalues only.

One Master's thesis position is for working on the problem of Thermal Relaxation. The Boltzmann distribution is one of the most important concepts. Often in different experimetal situations, system may not be in thermal equilibrium to start with, then the system will find the most probable state by a random search among all possible energy distributions and thus in principle, can take long time depending on the size of the system.  We plan to understand this problem using model system.

One Master's thesis position is for working on the problem of Effective Hamiltonian for multi-state problems. Nonadiabetic transitions due to potential energy curve or surface is one of the most important mechanism to efficiently induce electronic transition in collisions. In real systems, shape of potential energy curves & nature of coupling both are not very simple in general and so the problem is not in general analytically tractable. So it would be very interesting to construct effective spectroscopic Hamiltonians from experimental or simulated spectra for curve or surface crossing problems.

One Master's thesis position is for working on the problem of Constructing Effective Hamiltonian for clusters. Clusters are simple systems that exhibit complex behavior such as freezing or melting or even has the possibility of glassy behavior. The phenomena of internal re-arrangement and seeking minima on highly rugged potential energy surfaces of high dimensionality has been extensively investigated. The dynamical nature of large amplitude motions in these systems has yet to be explored. Here we plan to identify the essential features of the potential energy surface that has the strongest influence on dynamical behavior, so that we can construct a reduced dimensional model.

One Master's thesis position is for working on the problem using Machine Learning aprroach for electronic relaxation problem. Electronic relaxation of a molecule in polar solvent is in general modelled by diffusion-reaction approach. The estimated survival probability is in general plotted against time and the same is compared with that obtained from experiments. Now one can train the experimental and simulated data and use the machine learning approach to predict data for unknown systems.. 



"Fundamental Research - only few can do & fewer can understand."