Polymer Chemistry Blog

Sankarasekaran Shanmugaraju is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad (IITPKD), Kerala, India. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2013 with a gold medal for the best Ph.D. thesis in Inorganic Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. He then moved to Trinity College Dublin, Ireland as an Irish Research Council (IRC) Postdoctoral Fellow. In October 2018, he commenced his independent position as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at IITPKD. The main objective of his group’s current research activities is “the rational design and synthesis of novel structures, smart materials, and functional porous polymers for applications in sustainable energy, environment, and biomedicine”.

Read Sankarasekaran’s open access Emerging Investigator article Tröger’s base-containing fluorenone organic polymer for discriminative fluorescence sensing of sulfamethazine antibiotic at ppb level in the water medium, DOI D3PY00857F.

Check out our interview with Sankarasekaran below. 

How do you feel about Polymer Chemistry as a place to publish research on this topic?

Polymer Chemistry is a wonderful platform to showcase research from polymer and macromolecular chemistry. My experience so far has been very pleasant working with Polymer Chemistry. The review process was smooth and the editorial team was very helpful during our paper submission.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

We are interested in the design and synthesis of functional organic and hybrid polymers for applications in fluorescence-based sensing and adsorptive removal of environmental pollutants and contaminants. The most exciting thing about our work is the easy design and facial modulation of the functional properties of polymers. The synthesis of targeted polymer with desired properties and superior materials properties is often challenging. 

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

The most important question to be asked in this field is how the structure, texture, and functional properties of polymeric materials can be tuned toward real-world applications. How can the sensing and adsorption properties can be modulated to develop efficient molecular adsorbents?

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Identify unique research problems and explore them. The field of polymer chemistry has limitless opportunities to unveil.

Find out more about Sankarasekaran’s research on his faculty webpage. 

Leena studied Chemistry at the University of Rajasthan and Polymer Science & Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. She completed a PhD in Polymer Chemistry in 2010 from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. She has received several awards and scholarships during her studies, including a DAAD scholarship to undertake a Master thesis at the Technical University Dresden, Germany, and a Faculty of Engineering Scholarship from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. After the completion of her PhD, she worked as a Senior Scientist from 2011 till 2015 at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, USA. In 2015, Leena joined the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD) as an Assistant Professor where she has been promoted to Associate Professor in 2020. She received a Faculty Research Award in the Early Career Category (2020) from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi for her contributions in functionalized porous materials. She has served as an Academic Editor at PLOS One since August 2018. She is an expert committee member in several panels at the Department of Science and Engineering, India as well as served as a reviewer for several international peer-reviewed high impact journals, for example, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, Polymer Chemistry, Journal of Materials Chemistry B, etc. Since she joined IITD, she has been a frequent visiting academic at Australian Universities, including University of New South Wales and University of Sydney. She has been collaborating with eminent researchers based in India, USA, Germany, Australia, and Taiwan.

Read Leena’s Emerging Investigator article Polymer grafting on nitrone functionalized green silica via “grafting from” and “grafting to” approaches through enhanced spin capturing polymerization and a 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction, DOI D3PY00712J.

Check out our interview with Leena below:

How do you feel about Polymer Chemistry as a place to publish research on this topic?

Polymer Chemistry is one of the premier journals to publish research work directed towards polymer synthesis, its mechanism and application. For the currently published manuscript, Polymer Chemistry was my first choice for submission and we are grateful to the Editor and reviewers for finding the work suitable for publication in Polymer Chemistry. I am very lucky to have hard a working graduate student like Lukkumanul Hakkim N. This is the first Polymer Chemistry publication from my group, Surface and Macromolecular Chemistry Laboratory, and we are wishing for many more.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

The most exciting and challenging part of my research is to design scalable hybrid materials through the combination of nanomaterials and polymers for a wide variety of applications.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

If you really want something, be patient and work towards it. I have waited 13 years to get my first Polymer Chemistry publication, which was a dream since I was a graduate student when the Polymer Chemistry journal was launched in 2010.

Find out my about Leena’s research on her lab’s web page or follow her on LinkedIn or twitter @Nebhani_IITD.