Advanced Materials and Conversion Technologies for Personal Protective Equipment Used in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Prof. S. Suresh is Faculty & Former Head, Department of Chemical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT) Bhopal, India. He has received Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. Prof. Suresh was the recipient of Postdoctoral Fellow awarded by IUSSTF, Govt. of India, and that time, he was associated at The City University of New York, USA. He was also the recipient of Visiting Faculty and Researcher awarded by Govt. of India. During this award, he has deputed to Asian Institute of Technology Thailand and International Centre for Materials Science (JNCASR) Bengaluru, India. He has also worked at Pondicherry University and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He has supervised 08 Ph.D. students, 40 M.Tech. students, more than 120 B.Tech./project students, and few students along with co-supervisors. Total number of research journal publications are more than 120 in the area of new sorbents and catalysts, reactor design, environmental biotechnology, waste-to-energy, nanoengineered materials, gas separation, sensing of toxic gases, process safety, hazard, and disaster management and more than 66 publications in international and national conference proceedings and few with co-authored. He has undertaken 13 R&D and consultancy projects. He has published 01 Indian patent and 01 technology synchronized and many more in progress, 04 textbooks, and more than 20 book chapters and 06 edited books and proceedings. In recognition of his research contributions, he has received a number of awards and honors including National Innovation-Rashtrapati Bhavan, office of the President of India, DST-Young Scientist Award; Visiting Research Fellowship; and Prof. R C Singh Medal and IEI Young Engineers Award. Dr. Sarika Verma is currently working as Principal Scientist at Materials for Radiation Shielding and Cement-free Concrete division CSIR-Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute (AMPRI), Bhopal, MP, India. She has more than fourteen years of diverse experience in the area of research and teaching in CSIR and other academics institutes. She has visited various countries like Germany, Japan, China, etc. for her research and has worked in different capacities such as Research Scientist at Technische Universidad, Darmstadt, Germany; and Pool Scientist (CSIR-HRDG, New Delhi); and Women Scientist (DST). She is having more than 17 national and international patents to her credit and is recipient of various prestigious awards like Young Scientist Award, Women Scientist Award, Best Poster Award, etc. Over the years, she has been intensively engaged in various R&D projects for the designing and development of advanced materials useful for various broad application spectrums like radiation shielding materials, cement-free materials, polymeric composites, biomedical, and energy materials via novel techniques.  Dr. Avanish Kumar Srivastava is currently working as Director at CSIR-Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute (AMPRI), Bhopal MP, India. He received his M.Sc. (Hons.) in physics from IIT Roorkee, UOR (1986), M.Tech. in materials science from IIT Kanpur (1988), and Ph.D. in metallurgy from IISc Bangalore (1996), in the faculty of engineering. His areas of research interest are nucleation growth mechanisms, phase transformations, microstructures, and defects of a variety of materials in the form of bulk and fascinating nano-scaled. He has received BOYSCAST Fellow (2000-2001) awarded by DST at Universite Paris-Sud France. Dr. Srivastava has published about 300 research articles in reputed international journals, more than 300 papers, and invited talks in different scientific events in India and abroad. He has 12 patents to his credit, along with 11 technology/knowhow transfers to various private partners. He has published a book entitled, Oxide Nanostructures: Growth, Microstructures and Properties. He is instrumental in the development of standard documents under ISO Nanotechnology program (ISO TC 229). He has also served as Head (designate) of Centre for Calibration and Testing at CSIR-NPL, New Delhi. He was instrumental in the design and development of various courses of Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR) program of CSIR and was Coordinator of the courses on Nanostructured Materials and Advance Materials Characterization Techniques at CSIR-NPL.

• Impact of PPEs waste generation during COVID-19 pandemic on the environmental sustainability and its economic aspects in India and Worldwide.- Circular economy for advanced materials from used PPEs—state of the art initiatives and regulatory issues.- Conversion Technologies, sustainability, reuse and end of life materials from PPEs used in COVID-19 Pandemic.- Microwave and plasma conversion technologies for used PPEs.- Advanced conversion technologies and their recent research trends.