Biography

Dr. Sunil Thomas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, Fatima Mata National College, Kollam, Kerala, India. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, India in 2007 and 2009, respectively. He was a project fellow (KSCSTE, Govt. of Kerala) in the School of Pure & Applied Physics, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam from 2010 to 2013 on the project entitled “Preparation of Novel Planar Optical Waveguides Via Ion- Exchange And Sol-Gel Routes and their characterization”. He received his PhD degree in 2015 from Mahatma Gandhi University and his doctoral dissertation is on RE3+ doped multicomponent glasses and ion exchanged/laser written waveguides. He has obtained second place in the poster presentation (Indo German Conference on Laser Applications and Nanoscience, Trivandrum, India) for the paper entitled "Synthesis of Silica Capped Cus and Ag2S Nanoparticles and their Nonlinear Optical Properties" in December 2013. During PhD, he received Research Fellowships in Science for Meritorious Students (RFSMS-UGC). In 2016, he was awarded the Claude Leon postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research at Rhodes University, South Africa. At Rhodes University, he was working on thermoluminescence studies on glass materials and natural quartz samples from 5 April 2016 to 6 April 2018. He was a member of local organizing committee of the 15th International Conference on Luminescence and Electron Spin Resonance Dating (http://www.led2017.com/), held in Cape Town during 11 – 15 September 2017. In 2018, he was awarded the University Grants Commission (UGC) – Dr. D. S. Kothari Postdoctoral Fellowship (DSKPDF) to conduct research at University of Kerala, India. He has worked on "Synthesis and characterization of various rare earth doped silica/borate based phosphors for luminescent device applications" at the University of Kerala from 2nd July 2018 to 23rd November 2018. He has worked as Research Associate on the project "Investigation on anomalous conductivity phenomenon in amorphous selenium films" at the UAE University, Abu Dhabi. He has been an invited speaker at the International Webinar Series on “Moulding a Physicist” organized by Pavanatma College, Murickassery, Kerala, India, in September 2020. He served on the Organizing Committee of the Space Week Webinar Series – SWWS 2021 held online during 4-10 October 2021.

Dr. Sunil Thomas is serving as a reviewer for the Journal of Alloys and Compounds, Physica B, Materials Research Express, Thin Solid Films, Progress in Materials Science, Journal of Electronic Materials, Journal of Taibah University for Science, and Inorganic and Nano-Metal Chemistry. In addition to that, he is serving as a reviewer for the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) in evaluating the quality of research outputs and research proposals. He served as an external examiner of MSc thesis of Rhodes University, South Africa.