Dr Palash Dhara, Assistant Professor at the Anant School for Climate Action, got engaged in various interdisciplinary projects related to soft matter, surface and interfacial science, mesoscale structure generation through thin film instability, thin film drainage, etc., during the different courses of his research career.

At Anant, Dr Dhara wants to explore his expertise in creating micro or nanopatterned surfaces by utilising instability-mediated surface patterning, soft-lithography techniques, etc. Such surface engineering offers powerful ways to tailor substrate wettability and enable a range of biomedical applications, from bio-fabrication to anti-biofouling and antibacterial surfaces. He is particularly interested in creating structurally superhydrophobic substrates and hybrid surfaces with varying wetting regions, which hold exciting potential for studies on self-cleaning materials, fog harvesting, water vapour condensation, and more.

Before joining Anant, he completed his postdoctoral tenure at Stanford University, USA. His postdoctoral research at Stanford University focused on studying bubble-solid interaction and the complex drainage behaviour of entrapped liquid films between solid substrates and air bubbles in water and aqueous suspensions of colloidal particles. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at IIT Gandhinagar, where he successfully developed enzyme-tagged biofunctionalised self-propelled microscopic active motors and studied their dynamics under various conditions.

Dr Dhara earned a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. His PhD research was recognised with the prestigious ‘Shah-Schulman Award’ for the best PhD thesis in the area of colloid and interface sciences for 2022, by the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE). He was also awarded multiple scholarships (GATE Scholarship, MHRD Fellowship, etc.) and travel grants for attending national and international conferences and science meetings (MRS Fall Meeting 2016, Boston, MA, USA).