Advances in Sustainable Polymers

Dr. Vimal Katiyar is currently working as a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Indian Institute Technology Guwahati, India. He received Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India. His main area of research includes sustainable polymer development, its processing and their structure property relationship, rheological aspects, migration studies, toxicological effects, polymer degradation, polymer based nanomaterials, food packaging, clean and green energy technologies. Currently, he is a coordinator for two centers of excellence at IIT Guwahati including Centre of excellence for Sustainable Polymers funded by Department of Chemicals and petrochemicals, Govt. of India and the Centre of Excellence for Biofuels and Biocommodities funded by Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India. Prof. Katiyar is dedicated in developing the cost-effective, bio-based and biodegradable plastic products and its related technologies using various feedstock including bio-derived plastics and biopolymers. Currently he is engaged in establishing India's first heat stable biodegradable polymer production pilot plant. He is also a co-inventor of 22 granted/filled patents. He had published more than 100 peer reviewed research articles in highly reputed journals and more than 200 conference papers and 30 book chapters. Under his able guidance,10 of his students have got their Ph.D. and placed across the reputed institutions in India and abroad. His research group has received multiple National and International innovation awards in the development of bio-based polymeric products, nano-biomaterials, and related technologies. Dr. Katiyar is currently working on more than fifteen projects in the area of sustainable biopolymers, agriculture, food processing and related technologies. He also had grant from Ministry of Food Processing industries, Govt. of India to work in the area of Food packaging, migration and its characteristics. He acted as a catalyst towards bringing the Joint Degree in Food Science & Technology program between IIT Guwahati and Gifu University. Raghvendra Gupta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Guwahati. He has previously worked as a researcher in BITS Pilani (India), Institute of High Performance Computing, A*STAR (Singapore) and University of Sydney (Australia). His research interests are based around understanding transport processes in chemical and biomedical applications, and he is current research is on multiphase flows, microfluidics and interfacial phenomena. He has authored 18 research publications in reputed journals. Tabli Ghosh is a research scholar in the Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Guwahati. Her work focuses on developing and evaluating the health impacts of edible medicinal nano-coatings for food products.