Prof Amartya Mukhopadhyay from the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), Mumbai, has received the prestigious fellowship for the year 2021, for his contribution to the field of Engineering Science. The Swarnajayanti fellowship comes with Rs. 25,000/- monthly stipend along with a research grant for five years. He is also the recipient of several other awards and recognitions, notably, recognised by the Royal Society of Chemistry (United Kingdom) journals as one of the ‘2019 Emerging Investigators’ and conferred with the Young Engineer Award from the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). Also, he has co-authored a textbook – Interdisciplinary Engineering Sciences: Concepts and Applications to Materials Science.
Prof Mukhopadhyay heads the High Temperature and Energy Materials Laboratory at IIT Bombay. He has been instrumental in the pioneering research in finding new reactive alloys for designing anodes for Lithium-ion and Sodium-ion batteries. He says, “We aim to build better, robust, long-lasting rechargeable batteries for advanced applications, such as batteries for electric vehicles and for storage of energy harvested from renewable sources.”
Prof Mukhopadhyay’s group is actively researching novel solutions, one of them being focusing on designing new alloy materials that will reduce lithium-plating and ‘dendrite’ formation in the lithium-ion battery systems, thus improving the battery’s safety aspects. In addition, they endeavour to improve the battery’s energy storage capacity, the possibility of rapidly charging the battery (in a few minutes) and battery longevity.
