S. S. Bhatnagar Prize INSA Young Scientist Medal UNESCO Biennial Javed Husain Prize Materials Research Society of India Medal Sir C. V. Raman Award UGC Hari Om Ashram Trust Award G. D. Birla Award IISc Alumni Award FICCI Award TWAS Prize in Physics IITK Distinguished Alumni Award H. K. Firodia Award Knight of "The Order of the Star of Italy" Honorary Doctorate, Uppsala University
Dipankar Das Sarma was born on 15 September 1955[10] in Kolkata,[11] in West Bengal.[12][13] He did a five-year integrated masters course in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1977[8] and enrolled for research at the Indian Institute of Science, (IISc) Bengaluru from where he secured his PhD[12] in 1982 under the tutelage of renowned solid state chemist, C. N. R. Rao.[3] He worked as a research associate at IISc for one year (1982–83), moved to Forschungszentrum Jülich, (Jülich Research Centre) Germany as a guest scientist in 1984 and returned to IISc as a lecturer in 1986.[3] He stayed at IISc where he became the assistant professor in 1989, associate professor in 1993 and a professor in 1999.[3] He remains a professor at Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit at the institution.[4][8][12] He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo (2001–02) and at the Istituto di Struttura della Materia, CNR at their Rome and Trieste centres in 2002.[3]
D. D. Sarma is a former member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of CRANN and Trinity College Dublin, the Scientific Advisory Committees of the Inter University Consortium, Departamento de Asistencia Económica y Financiera, (DAEF) and the Inter University Accelerator Centre, New Delhi, the Academic Program Advisory Committee of the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata and the councils of the Indian National Science Academy and the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore.[8] He has also served the scientific council of the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (IFCPAR), the general council of the Asia Pacific Centre for Theoretical Physics, Pohang, Korea, and the working group of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) for the formulation of the 12th Five Year Plan, 2011 as a member.[8]
Prof. Sarma is a Senior Editor of ACS Energy Letters and a member of the editorial boards of several peer reviewed journals such as J. Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomena,[12][15]Solid State Communication,[16]Indian Journal of Physics,[17] and Surface and Interface Analysis.[18] He has also been associated with Advances in Physical Chemistry, Pramana – Journal of Physics, Journal of Physical Chemistry, The Open Condensed Matter Physics Journal and Research Letters in Physical Chemistry, as an editorial board member.[8] He is the Series Editor of Advances in Condensed Matter Science,[12] the South Asian regional Editor for J. Experimental Nanoscience and the Associate Editor of Applied Physics. He is a reviewer for many scientific magazines and the American Physical Society selected him as an Outstanding Referee in 2009.[8]
Legacy
Dipankar Das Sarma is credited with extensive research on nanomaterials and strongly correlated materials.[3][4][6] His contribution is reported in discovering the existence of a new phase in solid state materials through high-energy spectroscopies and theory.[10] His researches have been documented by way of several articles published in various peer reviewed journals.[8][19][20] Google Scholar, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 656 of Sarma's articles and has accorded him an h-index of 43 (since 2015)[19] and an i10-index of 167 (since 2015) and his articles have been cited over 20000 times.[21] He holds many patents[8] and Justia Patents has an online record of 16 of them.[22]
Sarma is credited with the establishment of the Centre for Advanced Materials,[4][23] a centre for advanced research on nanomaterials, smart materials, functional polymers, spintronics, strongly correlated electron systems, biomaterials and biology-inspired materials at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science.[3] He has attended many national and international seminars and conferences where he has delivered plenary lectures and keynote addresses.[8] He has also mentored many research students for their PhD theses.[3][8]
Sarma, an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, delivered three INSA lectures in 2006, Dr. Jagdish Shankar Memorial Award Lecture, Professor R. P. Mitra Memorial Award Lecture and A. V. Rama Rao Foundation Lecture.[3] Two years later, he delivered the INSA Kotcherlakota Rangadhama Rao Memorial Lecture in 2008.[3][7] Some of the other lectures delivered by Das Sarma are CSIR Foundation Day Lecture, Distinguished Public Lecture, 8th Atma Ram Memorial Lecture and the Joy Kissen Memorial Lecture, CNR Rao Prize Lecture.[8]
