Dr. Aditya Bandopadhyay
Age: 27
Area of research: Microfluidics, electrohydrodynamics, reactive flows, transport in porous media
Name of my Research Institute:
Education up to Ph.D. – Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India
Postdoctoral research prior to TU Darmstadt – Geosciences Rennes, CNRS, France
Research period at the TU Darmstadt: January to December 2017 (AvH Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers)
Questionnaire to the Research Fellow
My field of research is fascinating. To laymen I would explain it in the following comprehensible manner:
Pumping fluids through micro sized conduits presents several technical difficulties. One difficulty stems from the massive pressure drop across such channels. To obviate this, one may use electric fields to drive flows. As a part of this fellowship, the objective is to understand the interplay between surfaces which are coated with a slippery yet stable layer of oil and an aqueous solution flowing over it. The interface between the oil and water may be subjected to external electric fields to yield a polarization charge between them which may be exploited to finetune flow rates across channels.
My most important success in research to date is…
My work encompasses understanding of transport processes at various scales. We have shown as to how an aqueous medium between electrodes (say in batteries) dramatically alters the current-voltage relationships at high operating voltages. We have also established experimentally and theoretically the influence of an arbitrary electric field on the sedimentation of a drop of oil suspended in another immiscible oil. This finding has ramifications for chemical separation processes. We have then pinpointed the importance of a background flow field on the dynamics of two reactants initially segregated by a front bearing fundamental consequences for industrial processes and subsurface reaction (e.g. oxide precipitation), and for meteorological and oceanographic transport.
I’ve chosen the TU Darmstadt because…
TU Darmstadt is well known in the thermofluid science and engineering research community. The group at TU Darmstadt is engaged in several interesting and important problems such as thin film instabilities, molecular flow, theoretical and experimental microfluidics and so on. The motivated group members are led by Prof. Dr. Steffen Hardt who, apart from being very friendly and pleasant, brings to the fore a vast experience in transport processes as well as fundamental physics.
Questionnaire for the host
Guest of: Prof. Dr.rer.nat. Steffen Hardt
Department: Mechanical Engineering
You appreciate in your guest: For his young age, Dr. Bandopadhyay already has an impressive lineup of scientific achievements. He has an extremely broad background in theoretical/numerical methods for micro- and nanoflows. His methodological spectrum allows him to contribute to many different areas in the field of thermo-fluiddynamics. Moreover, he is eager to expand his horizon and learn new things.
You, your team and the TU Darmstadt benefit from your guest’s…
scientific excellence, which is rather obvious from the statements above. But that is definitely not the whole story. Dr. Bandopadhyay is a very open-minded character and a fast learner, and has already established a number of links to members of my group. I am sure that this Humboldt Fellowship will foster a very lively scientific exchange, where we can learn from Dr. Bandopadhyay and vice versa.