Research
Research Interests & Expertise
Engineered Living Materials, Synthetic Biology, Materials Engineering, Molecular Engineering, Nature-Inspired Engineering, Biomanufacturing, Additive Manufacturing, Biofabrication, Biopolymers, Self-Assembly, Hybrid Materials, Sustainability.
Novel Concepts & Innovations
Paper-like Plastic Living Materials, Hybrid Living Capsules, Stiff Living Materials, Therapeutic Living Materials, Sequestration Living Materials, Regulatable Living Materials, Microbial Ink, AquaPlastic, AquaMolding, AquaHealing, AquaWelding.
Molecular Architectonics, Molecular Biomimicry, Supramolecular Speciation, Supramolecular Regulation, Retentive Helical Memory, Super-Nonlinearity, Single/Double Autocatalysis, Dynamic Molecular Evolution, Reductionistic Engineering.
SECRETE: Secretion of Extra Cellular REcombinant β-solenoid proteins for Tailorable Engineered living materials
MECHS: Mechanically Engineered living material with Compostability, Healability, and Scalability
Before PhD
I have been actively involved in research since my undergraduate days in 2004, wherein, I was one among the 10 students selected from all over India for a 3-year summer research program (POCE) at a premier research institute, JNCASR (Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research), India. I was also one among the ~100 students selected from all over India for another summer research fellowship program (SRFP) at JNCASR. In these formative years, I had worked on a wide variety of materials that involved quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, graphene, inorganic semiconducting nanomaterials, thin films, and metal-organic hybrids.
During PhD
Intrigued by Nature’s elegant designs that produces remarkable materials from abundantly available benign components at ambient conditions, I focused on Bioinspired Molecular and Materials Engineering during my PhD at JNCASR. These efforts can be structured into three categories as follows,
Molecular Engineering – to engineer the assemblies of small biomolecules and its derivatives. The primary emphasis was on controlling the molecular assemblies into well-defined architectures and better understanding of the structure-property correlations, which led to the emergence of a concept known as Molecular Architectonics.
Molecular Biomimicry – to mimic the processes or functional characteristics of biomolecules and/or its assemblies. Herein, I developed kinetically controlled synthetic molecular systems that exhibited emergent behaviors, autocatalysis, supramolecular speciation, supramolecular regulation, retentive helical memory, pathway complexity, super-nonlinearity, and dynamic molecular evolution.
Molecular Materials – to program the assemblies of functional molecules and its derivatives to make functional molecular materials. Herein, I designed and developed the self-cleaning molecular material, organic semiconductors with high bulk electron conductivity & mobility, and spider silk-inspired stiff & hard reductionistic peptide materials.
Postdoc & Senior Research Scientist
Subsequently, amazed by the manufacturing capabilities of the living cells, I have employed microbes as a programmable factory to sustainably produce intelligent and sophisticated functional materials, at Harvard University (Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Virginia Tech and Northeastern University. In this direction, I have made pioneering contributions to the emerging field of Engineered Living Materials for energy, health and environmental applications, and thereby contribute towards building a sustainable world.
To mitigate the menace of non-biodegradable petrochemical-based plastic pollution, I have developed the world’s first water-processable, biodegradable and coatable bioplastic named AquaPlastic. The mechanical properties of AquaPlastic is comparable to other plastics and bioplastics, while my current efforts have scaled up the production yield substantially with a great potential for commercialization.
Living materials fabricated solely from microbial cells at ambient conditions that are stiff and strong. The living material comprises of living cells and a fraction of the material can self-regenerate itself and thereby demonstrated the unique circular material economy.
I have also developed the world’s first Programmable Microbial Ink for 3D printing of Living Materials. This Microbial Ink is produced from engineered microbes and can be incorporated with microbes for various functional applications like sensing, signaling, sequestering and delivery of biologics.
Engineered microbes to develop Living Sequesters that can selectively remove rare-earth elements from contaminated water. This technology would enable protection from lanthanides, safe and affordable drinking water, and valuable resource recovery.
Autonomous production of Hybrid Living Capsules that comprises of two different microbial species (to produce the structural and the functional components), two biopolymers, and the hybrid of organic, inorganic, and biological entities.