P. B. Sunil Kumar

Last updated
P. B. Sunil Kumar
Director at Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad
In office
January 2017 [1]  September 2022 [2]
Profession
  • Professor
  • Administrator
Known for Soft matter and
Biological Physics
Website Official website

P. B. Sunil Kumar is an Indian physicist, professor and the founding director of IIT Palakkad (January 2017 to September 2022). He also holds professorship(on lien) at Department of Physics, IIT Madras. [4] He is known for his research on Soft matter [5] and Biological Physics. [6] [7] He is an elected member of Kerala Science Congress. [8]

Contents

Awards and honors

Selected bibliography

Books

Chapter

Selected articles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phase transition</span> Physical process of transition between basic states of matter

In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas, and in rare cases, plasma. A phase of a thermodynamic system and the states of matter have uniform physical properties. During a phase transition of a given medium, certain properties of the medium change as a result of the change of external conditions, such as temperature or pressure. This can be a discontinuous change; for example, a liquid may become gas upon heating to its boiling point, resulting in an abrupt change in volume. The identification of the external conditions at which a transformation occurs defines the phase transition point.

Metallic hydrogen is a phase of hydrogen in which it behaves like an electrical conductor. This phase was predicted in 1935 on theoretical grounds by Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington.

A cell membrane defines a boundary between a cell and its environment. The primary constituent of a membrane is a phospholipid bilayer that forms in a water-based environment due to the hydrophilic nature of the lipid head and the hydrophobic nature of the two tails. In addition there are other lipids and proteins in the membrane, the latter typically in the form of isolated rafts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thalappil Pradeep</span> Indian scientist

Thalappil Pradeep is an institute professor and professor of chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He is also the Deepak Parekh Chair Professor. In 2020 he received the Padma Shri award for his distinguished work in the field of Science and Technology. He has received the Nikkei Asia Prize (2020), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) prize (2018), and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2008 by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics from 2017-2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Active matter</span> Matter behavior at system scale

Active matter is matter composed of large numbers of active "agents", each of which consumes energy in order to move or to exert mechanical forces. Such systems are intrinsically out of thermal equilibrium. Unlike thermal systems relaxing towards equilibrium and systems with boundary conditions imposing steady currents, active matter systems break time reversal symmetry because energy is being continually dissipated by the individual constituents. Most examples of active matter are biological in origin and span all the scales of the living, from bacteria and self-organising bio-polymers such as microtubules and actin, to schools of fish and flocks of birds. However, a great deal of current experimental work is devoted to synthetic systems such as artificial self-propelled particles. Active matter is a relatively new material classification in soft matter: the most extensively studied model, the Vicsek model, dates from 1995.

Maya Paczuski is the head and founder of the Complexity Science Group at the University of Calgary. She is a well-cited physicist whose work spans self-organized criticality, avalanche dynamics, earthquake, and complex networks. She was born in Israel in 1963, but grew up in the United States. Maya Paczuski received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from M.I.T. in 1986 and then went on to study with Mehran Kardar, earning her Ph.D in Condensed matter physics from the same institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monica Olvera de la Cruz</span> Soft-matter theorist

Monica Olvera de la Cruz is a Mexican born, American and French soft-matter theorist who is the Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry, and by courtesy Professor of Physics and Astronomy and of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University.

Suman Chakraborty is Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and Sir J. C. Bose National Fellow ,. He has served as the Dean, Research and Development, Associate Dean and the Head of the School of Medical Science and Technology of the Institute. He has also been Institute/ National Academy of Engineering Chair Professor. He joined the Institute in 2002 as Assistant Professor and has been a Full Professor since 2008.

Dwight Barkley is a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick.

Raymond Ethan Goldstein FRS FInstP is Schlumberger Professor of Complex Physical Systems in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IIT Palakkad</span> Public autonomous engineering and research institute

Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad is a public autonomous engineering and research institute located in Palakkad, Kerala. Proposed in the 2014 Union budget of India alongside five other new IITs, IIT Palakkad was established in 2015 as an Institutes of National Importance by the Government of India.

Viswanathan Kumaran is an Indian chemical engineer, rheologist and a professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Indian Institute of Science. He is known for his studies on stability of flow past flexible surfaces and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and the Indian National Academy of Engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Engineering Sciences in 2000. A recipient of the TWAS Prize in 2014 and the Infosys Prize 2016 in the Engineering and Computer Science category, Kumaran was listed in the Asian Scientist 100, a list of top 100 scientists from Asia, by the Asian Scientist magazine.

Narendra Kumar was an Indian theoretical physicist and a Homi Bhaba Distinguished Professor of the Department of Atomic Energy at Raman Research Institute. He was also an honorary professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research.

Madan Rao is an Indian condensed matter and biological physicist and a senior professor at National Centre for Biological Sciences. Known for his research on molecular dynamics on cell surface, Rao is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 2004.

An active fluid is a densely packed soft material whose constituent elements can self-propel. Examples include dense suspensions of bacteria, microtubule networks or artificial swimmers. These materials come under the broad category of active matter and differ significantly in properties when compared to passive fluids, which can be described using Navier-Stokes equation. Even though systems describable as active fluids have been observed and investigated in different contexts for a long time, scientific interest in properties directly related to the activity has emerged only in the past two decades. These materials have been shown to exhibit a variety of different phases ranging from well ordered patterns to chaotic states. Recent experimental investigations have suggested that the various dynamical phases exhibited by active fluids may have important technological applications.

Egor Babaev is a Russian-born Swedish physicist. In 2001, he received his PhD in theoretical physics from Uppsala University (Sweden). In 2006 he joined the faculty of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In 2007-2013 he shared this position with a faculty appointment at Physics Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA). He is currently full professor at the Physics Department KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Sarit Kumar Das is an Institute professor of the department of mechanical engineering at IIT Madras. He also held the position of Dean at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He was the Director at IIT Ropar. His research varies from a wide range of Heat transfer applications like nanofluids, biological heat transfer microfluidics and nanoparticle mediated drug delivery in cancer cells. He is an elected fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) and Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">K N Pathak</span>

Kare Narain Pathak is an Indian Theoretical Condensed Matter Physicist, Professor Emeritus and Former Vice-Chancellor of the Panjab University. He is an elected Fellow of several science academies such as the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India, National Research Council Canada and Punjab Academy of Sciences.

Christopher John Pethick is a British theoretical physicist, specializing in many-body theory, ultra-cold atomic gases, and the physics of neutron stars and stellar collapse.

References

  1. "Sunil Kumar is Palakkad IIT director". Deccan Chronicle. 8 January 2017. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
  2. "Seshadri Sekhar appointed director of IIT-Palakkad". The Hindu. 20 September 2022.
  3. "INDIAN RESEARCH INFORMATION NETWORK SYSTEM Vidwan-ID : 10394". irins.inflibnet.ac.in. IIT Madras.
  4. "Department of Physics | Indian Institute Of Technology Madras , Chennai". physics.iitm.ac.in. IIT Madras. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
  5. Åström, Jan A.; Kumar, P. B. Sunil; Vattulainen, Ilpo; Karttunen, Mikko (16 May 2008). "Strain hardening, avalanches, and strain softening in dense cross-linked actin networks". Physical Review E. 77 (5): 051913. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.77.051913. PMID   18643108.
  6. Desikan, Shubashree (8 January 2017). "A fully biocompatible cell-level motility engine". The Hindu.
  7. Bagatolli, Luis; Kumar, P. B. Sunil (18 August 2009). "Phase behavior of multicomponent membranes: Experimental and computational techniques". Soft Matter. 5 (17): 3234–3248. doi:10.1039/B901866B. ISSN   1744-6848.
  8. "About us – Kerala Science Congress". ksc.kerala.gov.in. KSCSTE, Government of Kerela. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
  9. "PB Sunil Kumar bags MV Pylee Award". The New Indian Express. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
  10. "Fellow Profile - Sunil Kumar, Prof. Palakurissi Balagopal". opsias.ias.ac.in. Indian Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 14 August 2020.
  11. "Fellow Profile - Sunil Kumar, Prof. Palakurissi Balagopal".