Career
Doctor A. Ajayaghosh is a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Outstanding Scientist at the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-NIIST), Thiruvananthapuram, India. He obtained his master"s degree in Science (1984) from Kerala University and a Ph. Doctorate (1988) from Calicut University.
He joined the Regional Research Laboratory, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (presently Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-NIIST), as a Scientist in 1988.
He was the Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Plank Institute for Strahlen Chemie, Germany (1994-1996). He has published several articles, book chapters and filed patents in the areas of molecular self-assembly, molecular probes and fluorescent materials.
He is a Fellow of all the three Science Academies of India, and is on the international advisory board of the journal, Chemistry-An Asian Journal. He holds an additional position as the Dean of Chemical Sciences, Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi.
One of the grand challenges in chemistry, in the 21st century, is to understand the role of relatively weak noncovalent bonds in the construction of functional supramolecular architectures.
Doctor Ajayaghosh has done brilliant work in advancing the field of supramolecular chemistry, especially in the design and synthesis of molecular assemblies called pi-gels, a new class of materials formed out of organic pi-systems with great potential for photonic and electronic applications. To control both the size and shape of these soft nanomaterials, he designed hydrogen bond functionalities into fluorophores called phenylenevinylenes, to optimize weak noncovalent attractive interactions between the aromatic cores of the monomer units. These cleverly designed molecules self-assemble to nanoscale supramolecular architectures through hydrogen bond / aromatic-aromatic attractive interactions.
Doctor Ajayaghosh was the first investigator to make functional phenylenevinylene organogels from designed building blocks.
He has shown that these self-assembled nanomaterials can be used as a soft scaffold to control electronic energy transfer processes, paving the way for the development of superior light harvesting devices. His 2001 paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (J Am Chem Social 2001, 123, 5148-5149) cleared the way for systematic exploration and exploitation of the properties of these designer organogels.
He built on this early work in the construction of aesthetically appealing but functionally useful nanomaterials that can be employed for energy conversion and in optical sensors to detect tiny amounts of TNT and many other molecules of relevance. He is a leader in this exciting new area of materials chemistry.
