After twice being nominated for the Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) Award from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, the third time was the charm for Ankur Gupta. On Nov. 5, Gupta, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, received a 2022 from his alma mater.

The award recognizes Gupta’s “outstanding contributions and achievements” in research and teaching.

“I am extremely surprised and somewhat in disbelief, that I received this highly competitive award from my undergraduate school,” Gupta said, adding that IIT Delhi only awards one to two alumni each year in the research category.   “It’s special to be recognized by your alma mater, especially with a highly competitive award like GOLD.”

IIT Delhi instituted the GOLD award in 2020 “to recognize and celebrate outstanding achievements and contributions of young alumni of the Institute in academics, business, profession and public service.”  

Gupta is the principal investigator of the Laboratory of Interfaces, Flow and Electrokinetics (LIFE). His research group blends applied mathematics with modern computing approaches to tackle fundamental problems in the areas of interfacial phenomena, complex fluids, multiphase flows and electrokinetics, with applications in energy storage, sustainable technologies and lab-on-a-chip devices.
  
“IIT Delhi instilled in me the importance of hard work and rigor,” Gupta said. “There I made lifelong friends who have given me support to pursue research and teaching. My mentors at IIT Delhi have been transformational and continue to give me advice about navigating academic life.”
 
A decade prior Gupta received IIT Delhi’s President's Gold Medal. He also received the institute’s Kalpana Chawla award for his contributions to research. 
 

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Ankur Gupta, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, received an ACS Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF-DNI) for his proposal titled, “Nonequilibrium Analysis of Active Droplets Driven by Micellar Solubilization: Effect of In-Situ Change in Droplet Shape and Inter-Droplet Interactions.” 

This is the first grant for Gupta’s group, the Laboratory of Interfaces, Flow and Electrokinetics (LIFE). The  two-year grant is for $110,000.

About 75 DNI awards are made each year.  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 “active droplets,” and this is a new area for LIFE. 

Ankur Gupta

“The 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.
 
Active droplets refer to the motion of droplets in another liquid when they “sense” a change in concentration of surfactants, Gupta said. Typically, droplet motion 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,'  a crucial process in enhanced oil recovery," Gupta said. 
 
  

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