A chemical engineer aspiring to contribute to the interdisciplinary areas in science and technology and medicine. My research interests lie in areas of microfluidics, opto-electronics and medical diagnosis. I aim to build devices on medical diagnostics not easily accessible in a country like India. My research focuses mostly on innovation and targeting the scientific gaps in medical field. Currently, I am working on building a flow cytometer for performing CBC and WBC differential. This is to be commercialized after having performed the necessary set of experiments. My supervisor, Prof. Mahesh S Tirumkudulu, is a core faculty in the department of Chemical engineering, IIT Bombay working in area of fluid mechanics, soft matter and microfluidics.
I am working on an industry affiliated project aimed at building a flow cytometer for 5-part differential using laser scattering principle. Further work is to be done in applications like disease detection and new flow cell/chip designs on blood cell analysis are proposed to be built.
Completed my Bachelors having done a project on 'Electrodialytic purification of biomass based platform molecules.'
Cleared the Higher secondary boards with 6th rank.
The Project was based on desinging an electrodialytic cell performing purification of TAL (Triacetic acid lactone) from the impurity methionine. TAL is an important platform molecule obtained as a by-product during fermentation along with several impurities that need to be separated. The impurities poison and deactivate the platform molecule specific catalyst. I performed electrodialysis of TAL along with a known concentration of methionine in a 5-compartmental electrodialytic cell wherein separation was done by employing an applied electric field across alternately arranged cation and anion exchange membranes. Methionine being a zwitter ion, at its iso-electric point, is rendered motionless suspended in its compartment and hence being separated from TAL.
A plant visit where I learnt how the products of petroleum are obtained.
A vocational training at the coal chemicals department of the steel plant of India.
A fellowship granted for projects based on novel cutting-edge technology catering to the needs of Indian nation.
Presented a poster on the topic, "Low-cost flow cell for flow cytometry and 3-part differential.".
Presented an oral presentation on the topic, "Low-cost flow cell for flow cytometry.".
Presented a poster on the topic, "Five part differential of blood cells by flow cytometry: Design and characterisation of flow cell."
Presented a poster on the topic, "Flow cytometer for 5-part Differential of blood cells by light scattering".
"A Low-cost flow cell for flow cytometry", (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bios.2022.114334).
Indian Patent filed (App. No. 202221007507) titled, "Compact smear device for biological samples".
Indian Patent filed (App. No. 202121050003) titled, “Sheath flow cell and flow cytometer including the same”.
Currently, for my PhD, I am working on microfluidics and Mie Scattering theory. Medical diagnostics has become crucial in dealing with problems requiring an in-depth body/biological fluid analysis. Flow cytometry is an essential analytical technique used in biomedical diagnostics that measures properties of cells, biological fluids, micro-organisms, and particles. All the flow cytometers in India are currently imported. We are aiming to build an indigenous flow cytometer capable of counting blood cells in addition to performing five-part differential of WBCs on the basis of difference in scattering pattern for the blood cells in focus. The project is aimed at developing this technology to cater to the needs of the far-flung areas in India where commercial flow cytometers for diagnostics are not available. Our method makes the use of technology based on basic laser scattering technique and data collection and analysis by affordable and in-house built fluidic and opto-electronic components. We make use of cost-effective yet novel electronic circuitry and affordable optical and fluidic components to build a laboratory prototype for measuring light scattered from blood cells. Our next goal is to scale up this laboratory set-up to a commercial flow cytometer to be marketed. The flow cytometer set-up consists of four sections: The fluidics (flow cell and injection machinery), the optics (lasers, light capturing lenses, objective lenses, photo detectors, photomultiplier tubes), the electronics (circuits for pre-amplification, peak detection and other mandatory connections), and, data collection and analysis. The flow stream containing particles is focused by hydrodynamic focusing using a flow cell designed in the laboratory using easily accessible material. The focused laser beam scatters from particles, which can be measured and analysed. The forward scatter is analyzed to measure the size of the particle while the side scatter (fluorescence) provides information regarding the complexity of the particle in focus. The project can be further diversified by designing innovative flow cells for our set-up, in addition to introducing alternate effective methodology to be employed along with flow cytometry. The project is at pilot stage right now with the laboratory set-up working with preliminary detection devices. We have been able to successfully detect model particles of 10microns and 20 microns using the prototype.
Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Bombay.