PROFILE

Aahana Ganguly

Email: [email protected]

Aahana joined Azim Premji University as a faculty member in the School of Arts and Sciences in 2020. Before joining Azim Premji University, Aahana worked at the National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) in the US-Food and Drug Administration (US-FDA) as a scientist developing engineered nanomaterials (ENMs)for radiotherapy enhancement and tumor targeting. Her work was focused on understanding structure-function relationships of engineered nanomaterials in complex biological environments. Much of this work was targeted towards the development of regulations for nanoparticle cancer therapeutics.

Her interest in regulatory policy developed during a two year STEP (Science, Technology and Environmental Policy) fellowship with the Princeton Environmental Institute and Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy in graduate school. She worked on developing a toxicolgical risk assessment framework using machine learning during this time.

In her doctoral and post-doctoral research at Princeton University, she carried out research aimed at understanding light-matter interactions in ENMs and developed a sensing platform to study surface chemical dynamics in solid catalysts using both computational methods and nanofabrication and surface engineering.

She is now interested in developing innovative teaching methodologies for undergraduate sciences and using science education for societal change. Her research interests focus on new computational methods incorporating machine learning techniques for the design of novel materials.

Academic Qualifications

• PhD (Princeton University)
• MA (Princeton University)
• MSc (IIT Kanpur)
• BSc (Delhi University)

Teaching

Physical Chemistry, Materials Chemistry

Areas of Interest

Surface Chemistry, Nanomedicine, Nanotoxicology, Plasmonics, Computational Electrodynamics, Machine Learning, Environmental Policy, Science Education

Research Interests

Structure-function relationships in nanotoxicology, machine learning applications in materials science, computational nanoplasmonics, regulatory policy for engineered nanomaterials

Publications and Writings

Bergman, S., Ganguly, A., and Bernasek S.L., 2018, XPS Characterization of a Plasmonic Sensor for Catalysis Studies by Controlled Differential Charging, Journal of Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomenas, 222, 88-94.

Ganguly, A., Mills E.N., Chou, S.Y., and Bernasek, S.L., 2018 , Low Temperature Preparation of Ultra- Thin Crystalline Anatase TiO2 Films on Gold by a Layer-by-Layer Sol-Gel Process, Thin Solid Films

Ganguly, A., Mills E.N., Chou, S.Y., and Bernasek, S.L., Low Temperature Synthesis of Ultra-thin Crystalline Anatase Films on Gold: Characterization and Sensing Applications, MRS National Meeting, Spring, 2015

Ganguly, A., and Bernasek, S.L., Lighting the way to the holy grail of catalysis: Nanoplasmonics as a mechanistic probe for the direct epoxidation of propene on gold, ACS Meeting, 2017

Ganguly, A., and Bernasek, S.L., 2019 , Effect of Plasmon-Plasmon Coupling on the Raman Enhancement of Gold Nanoparticle Arrays on Silica Substrates: A Coupled Dipole Model, Physical Review Applied In Review

On-going Projects