Ankur Gupta's LIFE lab wins $110,000 ACS PRF-DNI award
Ankur Gupta,听an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, received an ACS Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF-DNI) for his proposal titled, 鈥淣onequilibrium Analysis of Active Droplets Driven by Micellar Solubilization: Effect of In-Situ Change in Droplet Shape and Inter-Droplet Interactions.鈥澨
This is听the first grant for Gupta鈥檚 group, the Laboratory of Interfaces, Flow and Electrokinetics (LIFE).听The 听two-year grant is for $110,000.
About 75 DNI awards are made each year. 听The DNI award is given to early-career investigators on a topic distinct from their doctoral thesis and postdoctoral research. Gupta had not previously worked on the topic of 鈥渁ctive droplets,鈥 and this is a new area for LIFE.听
Ankur Gupta
鈥淭he proposals are reviewed by experts in the field and thus receiving the award increased my confidence to pursue new and bold research directions, '' he said.
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Active droplets refer to the motion of droplets in another liquid when they 鈥渟ense鈥 a change in concentration of surfactants, Gupta said. Typically, droplet motion听is time-dependent and the droplets stop moving after a certain period. Prior theoretical work in literature has largely disregarded the time-dependent effects, a gap this proposal seeks to bridge, he said. The group will first focus on understanding the time-dependent effect on a single droplet and will then extend the analysis to multiple droplets.
"The understanding of these time-dependent effects will help us get more insights into 'micellar solubilization,'听听a crucial process in enhanced oil recovery," Gupta said.听
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