FSci researcher receives best lecture award at recent conference in India
, Assistant Professor, , received the Dayawati Rastogi Lecture Award at the 8th International Conference on Perspectives in Vibrational Spectroscopy (ICOPVS), held February 24 to 28 in Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru, India. Also known as ‘Indian Silicon Valley,’ Bengaluru is a well-known information technology centre in India. The recognition, received on February 28 (National Science Day in India) included the presentation of a shield, certificate, scarf and US$300. Her talk was entitled Investigating machine learning as a tool to augment capabilities of vibrational spectroscopy.
The award is sponsored by the Indian Spectroscopy Society and the Asian Journal of Physics. The award was presented by:
- Wolfgang Kiefer, Honorary Chairman, ICOPVS conference series
- Chandrabhas Narayana, Chairman, ICOPVS 2020
- Vinod Rastogi, founder of the ICOPVS conference series.
Dr. Kiefer, Emeritus Professor, University of Würzburg and former editor of the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy, is a globally recognized pioneer and expert in Raman spectroscopy. As part of his function as honorary chairman of the ICOVPS conference series, he traveled to India for the 30th time. He commented, “Raman spectroscopy has enormous practical significance and can be used, among other things, to detect viruses and diseases, a topic that is particularly relevant to the current coronavirus. New technical developments are driving these and other fields of application."
Dr. Agarwal’s research group is now incorporating machine-learning techniques to Raman spectroscopy in order to make detection and analysis of materials rapid and autonomous. This will increase the usage of Raman as a technique which is not only limited to experts in a laboratory setting but to use in other areas, such as ambulances, point-of-care diagnostics, food industry and chemical industry.
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Enormous practical importance
Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman is arguably the most famous natural scientist in India. His discovery of the Raman effect, named after him on February 28, 1928, revolutionized material analysis. In 1930 Raman received the Nobel Prize in Physics. Since 1987, National Science Day has been celebrated throughout India on February 28. Even now, almost 100 years after the discovery, the spectroscopic method is an indispensable standard in every physical, chemical, materials-science and pharmaceutical laboratory.
The principle behind it: If light is irradiated onto matter at a certain frequency, part of the light is scattered back at another frequency. The frequency difference—the so-called ‘Raman shift’—provides information about the vibrations and the composition of the material. In addition to basic science, Raman spectroscopy is used in many applications today, such as in content analysis and quality assurance of pharmaceuticals and foods.
