Indo-US Science and Technology Forum Joint R & D Centers Fostering Partnerships The Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) established under an agreement between the Governments of India and the United States of America in March 2000, is an autonomous, not- for-profit-society that promotes science, technology, engineering and biomedical research through substantive interaction among government, media and industry. Joint R & D Centers Fostering Partnerships Indo-US Science and Technology Forum Indo-US Science and Technology Forum Contents Chemical Sciences 7 • Integrated Study of Correlated Electrons in Organic and Inorganic Materials 9 • Development of Metal-Ceramic Composites through Microwave Processing 12 • Theoretical Physics of Ultra-Cold Atoms in Optical Lattices 16 • Thin-Films and Nanostructured Emerging Coating Technologies 22 • Dynamics of Dislocations in Solid Helium and its Role in Supersolid Behavior 25 • Rational Control of Functional Oxides 29 • 3-D Engineered Electrodes for Electrochemical Energy Storage 33 • Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication Studies 37 • From Fundamentals to Applications of Nanoparticle Assemblies 40 • Crystallization at Interfaces 43 • Theoretical Studies of the Correlated Electronic Structure of Graphene 45 Engineering Sciences 49 • Highway and Airport Pavement Engineering 51 • Intelligent Transportation Systems Technologies 55 • Intelligent Structural Health Monitoring 59 • Design of Sustainable Products, Services and Manufacturing Systems 65 • Fire Center for Advancing Research and Education in Structural Fire Engineering 67 Environment and Energy 71 • Eco-Informatics Centre 73 • Bioremediation and Phytoremediation of Chemo pollutants 77 • Climate Change and its Impact on the Ecosystem of the Arabian Sea 81 • Climate Change and Health Adaptation 86 • Advanced Modeling of Tropical Land-Atmosphere-Ocean System for Simulation of Extreme Weather Events 89 Life Sciences 93 • Silk Protein Matrix for Cell Based Tissue Engineering 95 • Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering 99 • Nanomedical and Cellular Engineering 104 • Cardiovascular Biology 106 • Biological Timing 109 • Research Excellence in Science and Engineering (CRESE) on Nanobiotechnology 111 Mathematical and Computational Sciences 117 • Advanced Research in Machine Learning, Game Theory and Optimization 119 • Protein Interactor Discovery and Structure 124 • Nanostructure Genomics: Designing Functionality of 2-Dimensional Nanostructures and Nano-Bio Interfaces 125 Medical Sciences 127 • Biomaterials for Healthcare 129 • Cerebro-vascular Diseases 134 • Magnetic Resonance Technologies in Brain Cancer Imaging 137 • Cell Targeted Diagnostics and Therapy Using Nanomaterials 140 • Environmental Lung Diseases 146 • Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 149 • Indo-US Exchange Program for Optometry and Ophthalmology 153 • Nanomedicine for Head & Neck Cancer 158 • Tuberculosis 163 Physical Sciences 165 • Astronomical Object and Feature Characterization and Classification 167 • Research Excellence on Fabrionics 170 • Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy 173 • R&D Networked Indo-US iGEON-India 177 • Nanomaterials for Energy 181 • Nanoparticle Aerosol Science and Technology 186 • Novel Magnetic Structures and Excitations in Multilayers, Interfaces, Nanoparticles and Bulk 190 • Physics Beyond Standard Model 195 • Solar Eruptive Phenomena 200 • Accelerators and Detectors for future High Energy Physics Experiments 206 • Analysis of Variable Star 212 • Excellence on Advanced Materials Research 216 From the Executive Director’s Desk To enable Indian and American scientists, researchers and students from academia, laboratories (both public and non-governmental) and industry to carry out joint research activities by leveraging already existing infrastructure and funding available with the partners at both sides, the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum supports linkages established through virtual networked joint centers. The Indo-US Knowledge R & D Networked Centers and Public-Private Networked Centers aim to encourage joint project implementation on focal areas of thematic and applied research based on synergy of activities and harnessing complementary strengths of performing groups from the two countries. Knowledge R & D Networked Centers also provide opportunities for integrating research with education, through both student and faculty exchanges. Public-Private Networked Centers, on the other hand, enable to foster academia-industry partnerships by promoting pre-commercial R & D activities having potential towards applied research and product development. These Centers are aimed to capitalize on the scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship in translating ideas from the bench to the market place. More information on the Networked Centers can be accessed at www.iusstf. org. We at IUSSTF are pleased to provide a flavour of work done by all such Networked Centers supported by IUSSTF over the years in the past across various thematic areas. This compendium has been brought out on the occasion of the IUSSTF completing 15 years, and highlights the collaborative work carried out by such Joint Networked Centers supported by IUSSTF. The success of these Networked Centers have been amply demonstrated by the collaborative research outcomes, the value additions, joint publications, patents, reciprocal student and faculty exchanges, and most significantly in the ability of some of the partnering groups to garner national funding in their respective countries by leveraging the strength and value of such networked partnerships. We hope that the information provided in this compendium would also help interested stakeholders to identify researchers working in their areas of interest and forge new linkages in India and the US. Rajiv Sharma Executive Director, IUSSTF Chemical Sciences Indo-US Science & Technology Forum 8 Indo-US Joint Center on Integrated Study of Correlated Electrons in Organic and Inorganic Materials Principal Investigators Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences Kolkata, India [email protected] Sumitendra Mazumdar University of Arizona Tucson, USA [email protected] The Hamiltonian consists of (i) H that contains the About the Center SSH The central goal of this project has been : kinetic energy and the inter-ion electron-phonon (e- p) coupling, (ii) an orbital-ordering (OO) term HOO • To develop a theory to understand the common and (iii) electron-electron interaction Hee that includes features between correlated electron oxides and short-range e-e interactions within each site. other compounds of transition metals and organic Treating OO and e-p interactions using a standard self- charge-transfer solids (CTS). consistent approach derived from the equations: Superconducting CTS have nominally quarter-filled The self-consistency equations were used iteratively bands and aside from the common band fillings these given an initial starting distortion. In the infinite inorganic systems share two other common features system the OO or the bond distortion would occur for with the organic CTS: infinitesimally small coupling constants g and a. In • strong electron-electron interactions; and finite-size clusters, however, due to the finite-size gaps • lattice frustration. between successive energy levels, non zero coupling constants are required before the symmetry-broken Thus superconducting CTS in all cases have lattice state appears. We, therefore, consider g and a close to structures that are anisotropic triangular. The inorganic the minimum values needed for the broken-symmetry systems that we identified, such as LiTi2O4, MgTi2O4, state to occur. We performed calculations for lattices up CuIr2S4 and CuRh2S4 are spinels and the present to 16 x 16 (256 atoms with 512 orbitals). research activity of this joint center had been focused on spinels. We found a stable, orbitally-induced Peierls bond- dimerized state for carrier concentration of one electron Work Plan/Methodology per atom. The Peierls bond distortion pattern continues to be period 2 bond-dimerization even when the charge In order to incorporate orbital degeneracy, frustration, density in the orbitals forming the one-dimensional and the possibility of Peierls order in multiple band is significantly smaller than 1. In contrast, for directions the following Hamiltonian had been carrier density of half an electron per atom the Peierls considered for a checkerboard lattice with doubly instability is absent within one-electron theory as well degenerate metal orbitals at each lattice site. (see as mean-field theory of electron-electron interactions, Fig. 1). even for nearly complete orbital ordering. 9 Joint R & D Centers Partnering Institutions INDIA US • S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic • University of Arizona, Tucson Sciences, Kolkata • Mississippi State University, Mississippi State • Indian Association for the Cultivation of Sciences, Kolkata MnV2O4 from First-Principles Calculations. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102: 216405 • Soumyajit Sarkar, Molly De Raychaudhury, and T. Saha-Dasgupta (2009) Density-functional study of the electronic and optical properties of the spinel compound CuIr2S4. Phys. Rev. B 79: 113104 Software Generated Software had been generated to solve the model Hamiltonian incorporating orbital degeneracy, frustration, and the possibility of Peierls order in multiple directions. Fig. 1 Publications • R. T. Clay, H. Li, S. Sarkar, S. Mazumdar, and T.Saha-Dasgupta (2010) Cooperative orbital ordering and Peierls instability in the checkerboard