The Materials Research Society of India (MRSI) has selected Prof. Soma Venugopal Rao from Advanced Centre of Research in High Energy Materials (ACHREM) at University of Hyderabad to receive the MRSI Medal for 2022. This will be presented to him during the Annual General Meeting of MRSI scheduled to be held at Jodhpur during December 19-23, 2022 (website: iumrs.iitj.ac.in).
Prof. Venugopal Rao Soma
Prof. Venugopal Rao Soma obtained his B.Sc. degree from Osmania University in 1991, M.Sc. (Physics) degree from University of Hyderabad in 1994 and Ph.D. (Physics) from University of Hyderabad in 2000. He worked as a Research Fellow at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, UK during 2000-2003 and as Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore during 2003-2004. He worked as an Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati during 2004-2007 and joined as a Reader at the University of Hyderabad in 2007. He later became an Associate Professor in 2010 and Professor in 2013.
Prof. S. Venugopal Rao has been selected as the Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (NASI), India for the year 2021. NASI is the oldest science academy in India. He has also been recognized as one among the top 2% of scientists in the field of optics and photonics as per a recent study by Stanford University scientists (2020). He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), UK (2020); Fellow of the Institute of Physics, London, UK (2019); PUBLONS TOP peer reviewer award for 2018 and 2019; Fellow of the Telangana Academy of Sciences (2017); Recipient of the Chancellor’s award (2016) of the University of Hyderabad and NASI-SCOPUS award (2012) in Physics category. Prof. Rao is elected as SENIOR MEMBER of prestigious organizations such as OSA, SPIE, and IEEE. He is now serving as (a) a member of the editorial board of Defence Science Journal, DESIDOC, India (b) a Topical editor of Optics Letters (c) an Associate Editor of the journal RSC Advances (d) Member of permanent editorial board (Review Editor) for the “Optics and Photonics” section of “Frontiers in Physics” journal.
Prof. Rao has successfully guided 11 Ph. D. students and 5 more are working in his group. He has also mentored several post-doctoral, M.Sc., and undergraduate students. He has published 1 book, 15 book chapters, and >350 papers in refereed journals and international conference proceedings, presented >150 papers presented in various international/national conferences. He has delivered >80 invited talks and 3 PLENARY talks. He has successfully established state-of-the-art ultrafast laser laboratories at ACRHEM, University of Hyderabad, India. His research interests include detection of explosives using the techniques of SERS, LIBS, CARS etc., nonlinear optics, ultrafast spectroscopy, and ultrafast laser-matter interaction. His publications have >8450 citations (Google Scholar Citations), a h-index of 50. He has served in the technical/organizing committees for several national/international conferences and chaired a few sessions in few of them.