Scientist's Profile

Biomaterials, Additive manufacturing, Laser processing, Surface engineering, Implant design & development

Landmark Contributions:

Project Funding/ Management and Industrial/ Technological

• Tailored and implemented product re-innovation approach for accelerated product development leading to several technology developments and technology transfers at CSIR-CGCRI.
• Actively worked/working in 17 sponsored projects (10 as PI, 7 as Co-PI; 5 active projects – 3 as PI), submitted 26 proposals (5 CSIR and 21 other agencies) for funding and secured funding for 11 projects (₹844 Lakhs) excluding 12FYP project worth of ₹3970.25 lakhs. Current active projects (5 nos., 3 PI, 2 Co-PI) worth of ₹ 334 Lakhs.
• ECF generated: ₹5128 Lakhs (CSIR); ₹380 Lakhs (Other funding agencies); ₹56 Lakhs (Industries); ₹125 Lakhs (Tech. Transfer).
• National level project: Orthopaedic impairment is considered as the leading cause of social disability in India affecting over 214 million of patients. However, high cost and affordability of devices by common people is a major concern since the industry is highly fragmented and dominated by imports with almost 80-85% of demand met through imports. To address this, a national level project (Development of novel CSIR technologies for manufacturing tailored and patient-specific bioceramic implants and biomedical devices at affordable cost) has been developed and lead (2012-2017) with total cost of 21.77 crores involving 65 scientists from 11 CSIR laboratories. Key achievements include 200 SCI publications, 19 technology developments, 7 technology commercialization and 22 technical leads to be pursued. The developed materials/implants are at par with global products and are extremely cost-effective. Some of the materials being developed are unique and no such products/materials are available in Global market.
• Five technologies commercialized/transferred to industries (₹125 Lakhs) during 2015-22.
• Provided technical support/ guidance on AM and other product’s development and evaluation to several industries namely (i) M/s TTK Healthcare (Orthopedics Division), Chennai (ii) M/s General Surgical Company (India) Pvt. Ltd., Chennai (iii) M/s Orthotech Ltd., Valsad, Gujarat (iv) M/s Oriental Surgical Pvt. Ltd., Meerut (v) M/s G. Surgiware Ltd., Shahjahanpur (vi) M/s XcelLance Medical Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Navi Mumbai (vii) Sharma Orthopedic, Vadodara, Gujarat, (viii) M/s Sushrut Adler Mediequip Ltd. Pune. (ix) M/s Eaton Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Subsidiary of Eaton Inc., USA) (x) TATA Steel Ltd.
• Eight (08) MoUs/NDAs have been signed (i) M/s General Surgical Company (India) Pvt. Ltd. (GESCO), Chennai, (ii) M/s Orthotech, Valsad, Gujarat, (iii) M/s Emporis Implants and Surface Treatment, Navsari, Gujarat, (iv) MoU with National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, (v) NDA signed with M/s Eaton Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Subsidiary of Eaton Inc., USA). (vi) NDA signed with Kalam Institute of Health Technology (KIHT), Visakhapatnam, (vii) NDA signed with Gharda Chemicals Limited, Mumbai. (viii) M/s Surgiwear Ltd., Shahjahanpur, UP.
• Established/initiated several research collaborations within CSIR and other research, academic institutes, industries etc. and established research collaborations (4 Indian and 7 international academic institutes, 1 international research institute, 6 Industries, 8 hospitals).

Scientific and Engineering

• Significant research contributions in the areas of Additive manufacturing, Laser processing, Surface engineering, Biomaterial & implant design/development, microstructure-property correlations.
• Publications: 185 journal articles, 10 book chapters; total citations of 10157 and H-index of 51.
• Significant contribution towards Additive Manufacturing (AM) of materials (ceramics, metals and composites) using different AM technologies (DED, L-PBF, Binder jetting and Extrusion) for biomedical, aerospace and other engineering applications. Provided AM solutions to industries namely M/s Eaton Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Subsidiary of Eaton Inc., USA) and M/s TATA Steel Ltd. More than 100 publications, covering variety of alloys, ceramics, polymers and their composites have been published. Important contributions in the S&T of AM include (i) Patient specific, customized knee and skull implants. (ii) nano-ceramic scaffolds through binder jetting (iii) In-situ Ti-based MMCs through L-PBF and (iv) Natural fiber polymer composites, Ti6Al4V and HAp composites using extrusion based AM.
• Expertise in tailoring compositional, microstructural and surface characteristics of metals and ceramics to elicit desired performance for load bearing and non-load bearing applications. Notable contributions include: (i) Unique osteoinductive functional biocomposites with in-situ charge generating capacity to accelerate bone/tissue healing by adding multiferroic material reinforcement. This is the first attempt to demonstrate the application potential of multiferroic materials. (ii) New Sr-based based compound and its composites for bone replacement applications have been designed and demonstrate to have similar bioactivity/biocompatibility to that of HAp (current gold standard for bioactive material) but stronger than HAp. (iii) Unique therapeutic approach, to generate in-situ electro-mechanical stimuli thereby tailoring cellular activities for variety of tissue engineering applications.
• Supervised/mentored Eight (08) PhD students (0 in progress), twenty (20) M.Tech/MDS dissertations (including 4 MDS), Four (04) summer interns; Two (02) B.Tech batches (10 students).
• Teaching: Independently taught UG/PG courses at (i) Washington State University, Pullman, USA, (ii) Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), (iii) Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, Hyderabad (Video lectures: 18 modules of 45 min. each on Powder Metallurgy Module), (iv) National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal (more than 25 hours of guest lectures on additive manufacturing). Designed new courses in AcSIR for CSIR-CGCRI and CSIR-IICB.

Editorial Board:

• Associate Editor, Advances in Materials Science and Engineering (Hindawi Publications) (2019).
• Associate Editor, Journal of the Tunisian Chemical Society, Springer (Springer-Nature group) (Aug. 2017).
• Review Panel, South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) assessment committee for The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa (2017).
• Associate Editor, Computer-Aided and Digital Manufacturing Technologies (specialty section of Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering, Switzerland), September 2014.
• Board/Core Committee/Founding Member, Indian Orthopaedic Research Society, June 2013
• Editorial Board member, Journal of Surface Engineered Materials and Advanced Technology (Scientific Research Publishing, Inc. USA) – March 2012 to present.
• Editorial Board member, ISRN Biomaterials (International Scholarly Research Network, New York, USA) – April 2012 to present.