Rate My Professor Sarthak Mandal

Dr. Sarthak Mandal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, where he joined in July 2018 and leads the Spectroscopy and Chemical Dynamics Laboratory. His academic qualifications include a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry (Spectroscopy and Dynamics) from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2014 under the supervision of Professor Nilmoni Sarkar, an M.Sc. in Chemistry (Physical Chemistry) from IIT Kharagpur in 2010 achieving first division, and a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Chemistry from The University of Burdwan in 2008, where he secured the second university rank and was awarded the Satchidananda Gold Medal. Prior to his faculty position, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, with Professor Neal W. Woodbury from October 2015 to June 2018, and as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University in the City of New York with Professor Kenneth B. Eisenthal from September 2014 to September 2015. He has also held the administrative role of Associate Dean (Industry and R&D Collaboration) at NIT Tiruchirappalli.

Dr. Mandal's research interests center on ultrafast photo-physical and dynamical processes in chemistry, materials, and biology, with emphasis on spectroscopic, microscopic, and electrochemical investigations of advanced functional materials for light energy harvesting and conversion to electrical and chemical energy. His group designs bio-mimetic artificial photosynthetic systems using synthetic dye aggregates, conducting polymers, quantum dots, and inorganic-organic halide perovskites on templates of DNA, proteins, and polymers, exploring light absorption, efficient excitation energy transfer beyond the FRET limit, charge separation at interfaces, and photoelectronic applications including photoelectrochemical cells. Key publications include "Efficient Long-Range, Directional Energy Transfer through DNA-Templated Dye Aggregates" (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2019, co-first author), "Directed Energy Transfer through DNA-Templated J-Aggregates" (Bioconjugate Chemistry, 2019, corresponding author), "Influence of the Electrochemical Properties of the Bacteriochlorophyll Dimer on Triplet Energy Transfer Dynamics in Bacterial Reaction Centers" (Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2018, corresponding author), "Programmed coherent coupling in a synthetic DNA-based excitonic circuit" (Nature Materials, 2017), and "Mechanism of triplet energy transfer in photosynthetic bacterial reaction centers" (Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2017, corresponding author). He has 64 publications listed on the institutional IRINS profile. Awards include the Faculty Award from NIT Tiruchirappalli (2019), DST-INSPIRE Faculty Award (2018), CSIR-NET Research Fellowship (2009), IASc-INSA-NASI Summer Research Fellowship (2009), GATE (AIR 94 among 8056 students, 2010), JAM (AIR 14 among 2439 students, 2008), and Merit-Cum-Means Scholarship from IIT Kharagpur (2010). His teaching portfolio encompasses Physical Chemistry, Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics, Ultrafast and Single Molecule Spectroscopy, and related laboratory courses.