IIT Kharagpur
Foundation
IITKGP ka tempo high hai!

Prof. Sudipta Seal is an eminent scientist, entrepreneur and a distinguished professor and was also honored by IITKGP with the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2018. Earlier this month, he revisited IITKGP campus after a gap of many years to take a walk down memory lane, reminiscing about his college days and reuniting with his mentors and professors. He was personally bestowed with the 2018 Distinguished Alumnus Award he had not collected previously by Director V K Tewari and Deputy Director Amit Patra and other administration officials. 

Sudipta is currently the chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Pegasus Professor and University Distinguished Professor at the University of Central Florida (UCF). Dr. Seal joined the Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center at UCF  in 1997. He has been consistently productive in research, instruction and service to UCF since 1998. He has served as the Nano Initiative Coordinator for the Vice President of Research and Commercialization. He served as the Director of Advanced Materials Processing Analysis Centre (AMPAC), NanoScience Technology Center (NSTC), UCF College of Medicine, University of Central Florida, USA.

Prof. Seal’s outstanding research has resulted in the development of surface engineered nanoscale transition metal and rare-earth oxide ceramics for catalysis, energetics, and nano-biomedicine. He has developed the patented scalable methods for template nano-oxide particles. He engineered nanoceria (3-5 nm) with switchable valence states with regeneration capability. Using a similar concept, his team developed spherical nano-ZrO2 ceramics without doping with metastable tetragonal crystal structure and explained for the first time the reduced activation energy for grain growth in nano binary oxides. He also discovered the antioxidant properties of nanoceria by controlling defect chemistry and has created a unique field in inorganic nano-antioxidants for medicine. He believes that the unique structure of nano-particles with respect to valence and oxygen defects, promotes cell longevity scavenging super-oxide radicals produced in excess in cellular matrix and regenerate stem cell. This research is immensely significant for both cancer therapy and glaucoma. Prof. Seal has also developed multi-functional nanomaterial additives for aerospace nanoenergetics and his research in power plant fly ash waste has created unique chemistry of ash particles with nano structures that can be used to clean up oil spills.

“Being in IIT KGP has been one of the greatest joys and a timeless experience. I still remember my time, when I was in the RK hall. While visiting the hall again, I felt a plethora of emotions that this place shares with me. KGP ka tempo high rahe.”

Prof. Seal has won the prestigious Schwartz Tech Award and was recently elected to the World Academy of Ceramics. He holds 48 US patents and his technology is licensed to multiple companies, many of them start-ups such as nSolGellnc, nTiOX, NanoCelLC and Helicon.