Introduction of our new scientific staff member Ajay Kottapalli

Ajay Kottapalli started as a tenure-track assistant professor in Micro/Nano Sensors, NEMS and Nanofabrication on 01 February 2018. Ajay will set up his research in Advanced Production Engineering group of Prof. dr. Yutao Pei.

Ajay Kottapalli received MSc in Physics from Satya Sai University in 2007 and MTech in Solid State Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras in 2009. After that he briefly worked as an Applications Engineer in KLA Tencor Pvt. Ltd., wherein he was trained in optical techniques for semiconductor wafer defect inspection at Milpitas, San Francisco. In 2013, he received his Ph.D degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore through the  Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Graduate fellowship programme.

During 2014-2015, he was as a Postdoctoral Associate at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART). He then held positions as a Research Scientist and Principal Research Scientist at SMART during the years 2016 and 2017 respectively. During this period he was also a Project Investigator (PI) for a research projects funded by the SMART Innovation center and CENSAM Research Initiative and procured a total funds of 300,000 USD. Since 2014, he is a visiting scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) through the SMART programme. He currently also holds the position as a Research Affiliate with the MIT Sea Grant College Program at MIT.

Ajay’s research focuses on nature-inspired micro/nano sensors, biomimetic materials and sensors, MEMS/NEMS, nanofabrication, flexible electronics, 2D sensing materials, biomedical sensors etc. A key aspect of his research work is to develop nanosensors with ultrahigh sensitivity and accuracy by imbibing designs of biological sensors in nature. In 2016 Ajay founded a startup company named Sensornomics ( www.sensornomics.com ) which utilizes the MEMS Biomedical flow sensors which he developed during his research. Through Sensornomics he envisions to create new standards of preventive care through flow sensing in Biomedical and healthcare domain. In 2018, Ajay was awarded the top 10 innovators under 35 in Asia Pacific by the MIT Technology Review. His research work was featured in the news in Singapore ( The Straits Times ) and at various research magazines ( Asian Scientist ). In 2014, he was awarded the best technology pitch award at the SMART Bootcamp and at the Japan TechPlanter. He was one of the outstanding reviewers of the year 2016 for the Biomimetics and Bioinspiration journal. He has published about 40 peer-reviewed papers, written 1 book and held 5 patents in sensor technology and medtech.