Personal information
Biography
I received B.Sc., and M.Sc. degrees in physics from Calicut University and Mahatma Gandhi University, India, in 2006 and 2008, respectively. I obtained Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the Institute of Electron Technology (ITE), Poland, in 2015 with Marie Curie Fellowship. From 2009 to 2012, I was with CMET, Thrissur, India as a Project Staff. After completing Ph.D. from 2015 to 2016, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher with ITE. In 2016, I joined in Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies Group, University of Glasgow, UK as a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher and later has been a working as a Research Assistant in an EPSRC project until 2018. Since 2018 I am a Research Associate in same group. I also working in the role of Scientific Project Manager in a Marie Curie ITN Project AQUASENSE.
Research Experience
Electrochemical technologies including sensors and energy storage systems have recently attracted significant attention in health monitoring to fashion and defence applications. Considering the high electrical, electrochemical and physical (including flexibility/wearability) performance much attention is required in materials preparation and the fabrication of new electrochemical devices. As a result of this, I believe that my focus on electrochemical devices such as energy storage devices (supercapacitors) and sensors taking special attention and provides me a solid background to embark on developing solutions for future societal needs in flexible/wearable devices especially in health monitoring, electric vehicles, robotics, and pollution monitoring. Below I have briefly explained few key parts of my research track.
Advanced Materials: I synthesized and characterized many novel and composite materials including (1) Binary metal oxide pastes (RuO2-Ta2O5, RuO2-SnO2 and RuO2-TiO2), Graphite-polyurethane resin composites, Glass powder KCl composite for Ag/AgCl/KCl reference electrode, PEDOT:PSS doped DMSO ink in cellulose/polyester cloth (sweat based wearable supercapacitor - filed patent), ABO3 perovskite-based materials, Al doped ZnO, Sn doped ZnO, CuAlO2 and Ga-Sn-Zn-O solutions for transparent thin films and PZT-PZN composition.
Energy storage: For future energy storage device,
(i) For wearable sensors and electronics, sustainable materials-based energy storage device was fabricated. In this work the energy storage device designed by using conducting polymer, textile as substrate and human sweat as an electrolyte. The work published in Advanced Materials (2020) journal and patent filed for this work. BBC Science Focus Magazine selected this work a second work on “Future technology: 22 ideas about to change our world”.
(ii) Flexible graphite polymer composite based supercapacitor. This work published in Advanced Science Journal (top downloaded article in Advanced Science Journal), patent filed, received Innovative UK ICURe project (GBP 30k, role mentor).
(iii) Graphene foam based flexible supercapacitor for wearable sensors. This work published in Nano Energy journal and received ELEKRA 2018 Award for best university research category award in UK.
Sensors: I have experience in fabrication of many sensors (flexible, stretchable and non flexible) for monitoring pH, temperature, pressure, ammonia, NO, oxygen, water conductivity and sweat salinity. As a part of my Ph. D. I developed new potentiometric pH sensors for online water quality monitoring. In the area of sensors for water quality monitoring recently I am working as Associate Editor/Guest editor in special in a special issue of IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
I have extensive experience in Marie Curie projects in the roles of Early Career Researcher (PhD), Experienced Researcher (Post doc) and scientific project manager. My research achievements have been recognized by several credible agencies and institutes. I was shortlisted for important awards such as by the European Commission for Marie Curie Awards in the “Promising Research Talent” category and “Outstanding Young Scientists Scholarship Award” from the Polish Ministry of higher education. Recently, BBC Science Focus Magazine selected sweat based supercapacitor work on “Future technology: 22 ideas about to change our world”-July/2020. As project investigator I led a collaborative project funding from a Royal Academy of Engineering Seed Funding project in collaboration with partners from Glasgow, India and South Africa. I also involved as Co-Investigator in other projects related sensors for water quality monitoring.
I authored/co-authored 60+ articles (journals and conference proceedings) in high impact journals including Advanced Materials, Progress in Material Science, Advanced Science, Nano Energy, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, ACS Applied Material Interface, etc.,Submitted three patents, in which two of them are related to supercapacitor (sweat based textile supercapacitor and flexible graphite composite supercapacitor).