Amit KUMAR profile

I am a PH.D. scholar in the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Madras. I joined IIT Madras as an MS scholar in Interdisciplinary research program(IDRP) in 2017 and later upgraded to PH. D. program. Being an interdisciplinary scholar, I am working under the joint supervision and guidance of Prof. Nitish R Mahapatra (Department of Biotechnology) and Prof. Pijush Ghosh (Department of Applied Mechanics). My work is based on the development and tuning of stimuli-responsive polymer systems for their usage in biomedical applications.

In order to use stimuli-responsive material for biomedical application, we need to ensure our material system have desired property such as biocompatibility, Inert, functionality in terms of drug delivery control and mechanical property, etc. I have worked on solvent-responsive polymer hydrogel films such as chitosan, carboxymethyl cellulose(CMC), and Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). I have tuned their properties for different application purposes such as 1) Changing mechanical properties by varying crosslinking type and density, by varying concentration of polymer system. 2) Surface modification of the film to form a bilayer system to attain bidirectional control of actuation and under solvent actuation. 3) Designing a pH-responsive bilayer system with actuation controlled drug release and inhibition. The key property of actuation for our biocompatible hydrogel system has been found to be useful as an antifouling surface, bio-mimicking real systems such as heart valves and stents, etc.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9935-3775