Infosys Award Function 2012
Programme (09:30 - 13:30)
Expository Lectures
09.30-10.30 hrs : Water: How well do we know H2O? Prof. Charusita Chakravarty Indian
Institute of Technology, Delhi
10.30-11.30 hrs :Atomic Clocks and the 2012 Physics Nobel Prize Prof. Bhanu P. Das
Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore
11.30-12.00 hrs : Tea
Award Function (12.00 - 13.30 hrs)
Welcome : Prof. Jayashree Ramadas
Centre Director, HBCSE
Address and award distribution : Dr. A. K. Suri
Director, Materials Group BARC
Vote of Thanks : Prof. Vijay Singh
National Coordinator, Science Olympiads
LUNCH
Details about the talks and the speakers are below.
1) PROF. CHARUSITA CHAKRAVARTY
Water: How well do we know H2O?
Water shapes life as we know it, from the aqueous environment of the living cell to many aspects of terrestrial climate. Despite its familiarity, there are many aspects of the physics and chemistry of water that are not well-understood and form the subject of current research. In the past couple of decades, experiments as well as theory have explored our understanding of water at different length scales, starting from small clusters, to the anomalous properties of bulk water and the role of water in the self-assembly of biomolecules into functional nanoscale structures. Starting with some basic concepts of physical chemistry, this talk will discuss some of these experiments on water and its role in biological and environmental contexts.
About the Speaker
Charusita Chakravarty obtained her Ph.D. degree in theoretical chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 1990. She subsequently did her postdoctoral research in Santa Barbara, Delhi and Cambridge and has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at IIT Delhi since 1994. Her research is in the area of physical and computational chemistry, with strong interdisciplinary interests in materials science, physics and chemical engineering. She is interested in using computer simulation techniques for molecular systems to understand the relationships between thermodynamic and transport properties of liquids, including anomalous behaviour of water, and the collective re-organization of atoms associated with phase transitions and nanoscale self-assembly. Some of her most recent work is on using structural estimators for the entropy to understand structure-property relationships of liquids, which may be translated in general terms as an effort to translate the qualitative insight "entropy is a measure of the degree of disorder" into quantitative measures for molecular systems. She enjoys teaching physical chemistry, specially quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Prof. Chakravarty is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and has received the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar award (2009), the Stree Shakti Science Samman (2009), B. M. Birla Science award (1999) and the INSA Medal for Young Scientists (1996).
2) PROF. BHANU P. DAS
Atomic Clocks and the 2012 Physics Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize in Physics this year was awarded to Serge Haroche and David Wineland for their ground breaking work on the manipulation and measurement of single quantum particles. Wineland's major contribution has been the development of atomic clocks using a single trapped and laser cooled ion. The talk will describe the important features of such clocks. The aluminium ion clock which was proposed a few years ago by Wineland's group at NIST Boulder, USA will be highlighted. Our group's theoretical work in establishing it as the world's most accurate clock will be touched upon.
About the Speaker
Bhanu Pratap Das graduated with B.Sc. (Honours) in Physics from IIT Kharagpur in 1974. He received his M.S. in 1976 and PhD in 1981 from the State University of New York at Albany, USA. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Riverside and Max Planck Institute, Munich. He has held faculty positions at Colorado State University, Utah State University, Oxford University and IIT Bombay before joining the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore as Professor in 1993. He is currently a Senior Professor and the Acting Director of IIA.
Prof. Das' primary research interest is in the interface of atomic and particle physics. His theoretical work on atomic parity violation in combination with the measurement of this phenomenon led to one of the first successful tests of the Standard Model of particle physics. His findings on time-reversal violations in atoms in recent years has provided new insights into physics beyond the Standard Model. His group has provided theoretical support to experimentalists at NIST, Boulder led by this year's physics Nobel Prize winner, David Wineland to establish the aluminium ion clock as the world's current most accurate clock. He has worked on the behaviour of matter at ultracold temperatures (billionth of a degree above absolute zero) and predicted the existence of of the supersolid state of matter. Prof. Das is a Fellow of the Amercan Physical Society and was recently a Research Professor of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
All HBCSE members are invited for the function and the lunch thereafter.
