Dr. Indrani Chakraborty did her PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai in 2014 on structure-property relationships in nanomaterials. During her PhD, she worked on stabilizing and studying the properties of novel crystallographic phases of common silver as films and nanorods. While working with nanorod arrays, she grew interested in the exquisite structures produced by the self-assembly of the nanorods. Later she moved into the area of experimental soft matter physics and self-assembly with two successive post-doctoral fellowships in Leiden University, The Netherlands (2014-2016) and Tel Aviv University, Israel (2017-2020). She joined BITS-Goa in September 2020.
Her research interests include: a) 'Programmable self-assembly' using colloidal particles as building blocks and specific designable local interactions. b) Active particle propulsion and micro-bots for targeted drug-delivery c) Micro-rheology and anomalous diffusion in complex, crowded environments d) Machine learning based particle tracking and diffusion model analysis e) Emergent properties in micro and nano systems-from super-hydrophobicity to field emission. Her work is interdisciplinary, encompassing colloidal physics and chemistry, particle tracking analysis, confocal microscopy and optical trapping. She is also interested in development of biomimetic nanomaterials for a wide range of applications.