Introduction to soft matter

Dr. Aloke Kumar received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India in 2005 and his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA in 2010. His doctoral work is one of the founding works in the area of opto-electrofluidics. His research on opto-electric manipulation of matter in microfluidic systems has been recognized by the scientific community through several awards, including the prestigious DeKarman fellowship. After completing his doctoral work, Dr. Kumar joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a Eugene Wigner Fellow. In this role, Dr. Kumar established a research program focused on understanding bacterial biofilms. After his post-doctoral work, Dr. Kumar joined University of Albertas Mechanical Engineering Department, where he was the Canada Research Chair in Microfluidics for Biological Systems. He recently moved to the Indian Institute of Science, where he is re-establishing his Soft Matter Lab with a focus on bacterial biofilms and polymeric flows. Dr. Kumars academic record boasts a constant pursuit of excellence. He has co-authored over 50 scientific manuscripts (38 peer-reviewed journal articles, 10 book chapters and 2 invited journal articles). He has published in reputed journals like Nanoscale, Lab-on-a-Chip, Langmuir and Physical Review Letters. Eight of his papers have also been journal cover articles (Soft Matter, Lab-on-a-Chip, Applied Physics Letters & Green Chemistry).