Profile

Currently a Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow – co-fund SMART4.0 at the SFI Confirm Smart Manufacturing Centre, Ireland. I completed my Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics and Design from the Indian Institute of Technology- Kanpur, where I worked on Active Composites and Smart Materials. Currently, I’m working on Memory Alloys and their integration with Smart Wearables, Digital Twin of a Manufacturing Pilot Line, and as an investigator on the Social Impact Study of Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0. I have also received several notable international accolades, including the Sakura Research Fellowship, and the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship.

My project involves the design and fabrication of a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA)-based smart glove or a hand exoskeleton, hence an add-on to conventional gloves to control robotic arm movements in real-time. The data from the kinesthetic feedback from the fingers is fed into ROS which controls the robotic arm movements based on individual or multiple finger responses. In the initial stages of the project I am working with pairing the glove with interactive toys and have proposed a framework to understand cognitive development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I hope before the end of my project in 2023, we can do a human-factor study on the glove and thereby commercially manufacture and find its integration in multiple fields, especially MedTech.

A typical day in the life of a Postdoc researcher is more or less the same. However, living in Ireland gives more opportunities to relax along with work.

I wake up around 6 am and prepare my lunch. I leave the house around 7:30 am for gym and then from there I directly go to the lab around 9 am. From then on I work on my emails, make presentations, have meetings with students, and read and write journal paper(s). At 12 pm I enjoy my lunch with my lovely colleagues where we not only discuss our weekend adventures but also plan our next weekend apart from our regular research-related chats.

I spend the afternoon conducting experiments, or working on the Robotic Cell related simulation software. It is also the time that I prepare my lectures, as I also work as an Assistant Lecturer at SETU, Waterford.

I leave the lab/office around 5:30 pm – 6 pm and shop for groceries and prepare my dinner. Since Athlone has a fairly good live music scene, so if someone good is playing I spend a couple of hours listening to live music and then sleep early- prepared for the next day.