Dr. Aruna Dhathathreyan, Scientist, Central Leather Research Institute: she is biophysical chemist and is working in the area of interfacial science. Her areas of specialization are: biophysics - spectroscopy of bio-molecules, biophysical chemistry - protein/lipid interactions at interface, material research - Langmuir-Blodgett films (LB films), new materials at interfaces and Interfacial Science - Phase transitions in materials, designing new experimental techniques to study physical properties at interfaces. She has developed new tools and techniques to probe interactions at air-liquid and liquid-solid interfaces. Her research is in the soft condensed matter. She has used Langmuir and Langmuir-Blodgett films to create advantage in demonstrating the organization and interfacial phenomena in several complex systems. The speciality of her work is in its thoroughness and clarity. The originality of her work stems from the selection of scientific issues based on thought leadership. Significance of her work is on account of unambiguos experimental demonstration of validity of concepts. She has worked on phase behaviour of complex systems. Several contributions by her have appeared in peer valued journals. She is scientifically both productive and original. Some of her important contributions are in areas of development in probes for mechanistic processes at interfaces, factorizing structural contributions to molecular organization in liquid phases, designing to reconstruct complex interactions at interfaces in terms of simpler parameters and components, evaluation of compability of surfaces based on surface charges and potentials and developments of hydrophobicity scale for proteins.
She has provided a rationale for some general phenomena in interfcaial science. Impact in the field is measured from the quality of citations of her work in literature. She is an established leader in her professional arena. The social relevance of her work will result from applications of her 2D work and measurement tools for hydrophobicity scales for proteins.
