NCL scientists bag awards

PUNE: Three scientists from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research's (CSIR) National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) have been selected for the CSIR Young Scientists award 2011'. While Amol Kulkarni has been selected for the engineering sciences category, D H Dethe and Rahul Banerjee have been selected in the chemical sciences category.
Kulkarni holds a PhD in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical technology, Mumbai, and has done his post doctorate from the Max Planck Institute, Magdeburg (Germany).his areas of interest include microreactor technology, microfluidics, continuous flow synthesis among others. He has established a micro-reaction laboratory for studying the chemical reaction in miniaturised systems, besides developing new generation chemical process equipment that are efficient from the current ones.
On the other hand, Dethe is with the organic chemistry division of the NCL. Dethe has twelve publications to his credit and has also filed one patent. At present eight students are working with him.
Banerjee is with physical and materials chemistry division of NCL and his areas of research include design and synthesis of porous metal organic frameworks (MOFs) for reversible hydrogen storage and carbondioxide (CO2)sequestration applications. Overall, his efforts have led to nearly 34 publications in international journals with more than 670 citations over the years. Banerjee is currently trying to design materials that can selectively adsorb CO2 and exhibited rapid CO2 uptake at low pressures.
The award carries a cash prize and a citation and will be presented to the three scientists on September 26 on the occasion of the CSIR foundation day in New Delhi.