Speaker: Prof. Ayan Banerjee, IISER, Kolkata
Date: 8th April 2022 (Friday)
Time:  05:10 PM (IST)
Title:   Optical tweezers: throwing light upon life.

Abstract:  Optical tweezers (OT), with their ability to apply controlled miniscule forces to transparent mesoscopic objects, have been a game-changer in the study and manipulation of the tiny building blocks of life - viz. cells, DNA, proteins, and so on. In this talk, I will take you through a brief journey of what OT has enabled in biology - ranging from determining the elasticity of DNA, to the 'walk and twist' motion of motor proteins, to the rigidity of cytoskeletal lamins. We shall also discuss the very basics of how tweezers work, and how experimental ingenuities with a tightly focused beam of light leads to the understanding of life working at the level of its most fundamental units.
Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/jpx-brrb-cts?hs=122&authuser=1
Live Stream link: https://stream.meet.google.com/stream/6 ... 8904?pli=1

Bio: Ayan Banerjee is a Professor of Physics, and presently the Department Chair at IISER Kolkata. He is an experimental physicist working in optics and precision spectroscopy for the last twenty five years. At IISER Kolkata, he has set up a laboratory which specializes in optical trapping and manipulation. Research in the lab spans a  wide gamut of applications with tweezers including the spin-orbit interaction of light, micro-patterning using tweezers generated and manipulated microbubbles, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and stochastic processes, thermo-optical traps, and so on. He has published more than fifty research papers and twenty  patents based on his research. He is enamoured with anything creative, and is an avid theatre-worker, playwright, and occasional blogger.

On behalf of Organizing committee
Prof. Rakesh Choubisa
HoD, Physics Department
BITS, Pilani, Pilani Campus