Chemist Accepts Award in Mumbai, India

Dr. Arunava Gupta
Dr. Arunava Gupta

From the March 2014 Desktop News | Dr. Arunava Gupta, professor in the Department of Chemistry and UA’s College of Engineering, returned to his home country of India in February to accept the CRSI Medal from the Chemical Research Society of India. The award is given annually to outstanding chemists of Indian origin who are working outside of India.

Gupta shares the honor this year with Dr. Varinder Aggarwal, professor at the University of Bristol in England. Gupta was selected because of his contributions to the field of materials chemistry. He accepted the award during the 2014 CRSI National Symposium in Chemistry held Feb. 7-9 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in Mumbai, India.

“I am proud and honored for the recognition from the country where I was born and received my high school and undergraduate education,” Gupta said.

Gupta joined the UA faculty in 2004 and has served as the associate director of the Center for Materials for Information Technology, also known as MINT, since 2008. At MINT, his work is focused on new materials and structures for use in information technology and energy applications.

He has published more than 350 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has been awarded more than $5 million from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He was named in 2013 a Distinguished University Research Professor by The University of Alabama Board of Trustees.

Gupta received a master of science in chemistry with an engineering minor from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India, a master in chemistry from Columbia University and a doctorate in chemical physics from Stanford University. Prior to joining UA he had worked for nearly 20 years at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.