The University of Hyderabad (UoH) organized a distinguished lecture titled “Structure – Mechanical Property Correlations in Molecular Crystals” by Prof. Upadrasta Ramamurty at the Zakhir Husain Lecture Complex, UoH.
Prof. Ramamurty, affiliated with the School of Chemistry, the University of Hyderabad as the prestigious Institution of Eminence Chair Professor, elegantly provided insights into understanding the connections between molecular solids’ (crystal) structure and their mechanical properties. He also stressed the importance of the nanoindentation technique with which mechanical properties of (pharmaceutical) materials can be measured with high precision, even when available only in small quantities.
Overall, his talk illustrated the utilization of such cross-disciplinary knowledge gainfully for the design of molecular solids for specific and targeted mechanical performances and for identifying polymorphs in solid drugs. In his examples, he showed that several past and present-day researchers of University of Hyderabad have worked on problems related to mechanical crystals.
Pioneering studies on the mechanical behaviour of organic crystals were published from the School of Chemistry at University of Hyderabad in the early 2000s.
Currently, Prof. Upadrasta Ramamurty is President’s Chair Professor in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering. Concurrently, he directs the “Structural Metals and Alloys Programme,” a S$ 25 million nationwide project funded by A*STAR, Singapore.
His current research interests include deformation and fracture behavior of amorphous and crystalline alloys, additive manufacturing, and the development and application of the nanoindentation technique. He published 338 papers in peer-reviewed international journals (with a current h-index of 75) and is an editor of Acta Materialia and Scripta Materialia.
He is a Fellow of INSA, INAE, IASc, and TWAS, and a recipient of the Scopus Young Scientist and National Metallurgist Day awards, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar and TWAS prizes (both in Engineering Sciences category), and Swarnajayanthi and JC Bose National Fellowships. He was a Honorary Professor at JNCASR, Qiushi Distinguished Visiting Professor of Zhejiang University, China.