Dr. Paresh Kumar Samantaray Assistant Professor, CME Contact 301 Sparkman DriveEngineering BuildingRoom 117EHuntsville, AL 35899 Campus Map 256.824.3544paresh.samantaray@uah.edu Biography Dr. Samantaray is an Assistant Professor in Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. He obtained his B. Tech in Plastics Engineering from CIPET, Bhubaneswar, where he was a gold medalist. After briefly working for ALPLA India, he completed his MSc. Engg. and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Following graduate school, he did his postdoctoral research at the International Institute for Nanocomposites Manufacturing (IINM), WMG, University of Warwick, with Profs. Chaoying Wan and Tony McNally. In mid-2021, he joined the California Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Scholar with the prestigious Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral fellowship. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Samantaray is a materials scientist by training with expertise in the synthesis, characterization, and applications of polymers, nanostructured and functional materials, and polymer nanocomposites. He is passionate about intriguing problem statements that challenge his understanding of the structure-property-function relationship in synthetic materials chemistry and polymer nanocomposites for diverse applications, including but not limited to Plastics Packaging, Biomaterials, Domestic and Wastewater treatment, Desalination, Heavy Metal Remediation, and Aerospace Shielding Materials. He is an Advisory Board Member on the Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars Advisory Board of the American Chemical Society Smart Nanocomposites Advancements and Innovations Laboratory website Education Ph.D, BioSystems Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 2019 MS, Eng, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 2019 B.Tech., Plastics Engineering, Central Institute of Petrochemical Eng. and Technology, 2014 Honors & Awards Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, Caltech, 2023 ACS Younger Chemist Leadership Institute Award, YCC, American Chemical Society, 2023 Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellowship, USIEF (Fulbright Commission, India), 2021-23 Outstanding Reviewer Award 2021 and 2022, RSC Advances, The Royal Society of Chemistry Expertise Polymer Blends and Nanocomposites Plastics Packaging Materials Polymeric and Hybrid Separation Membranes Composites for Space Applications (EMI and Radiation Shielding Materials) Recent Publications Samantaray, P. K., & Wan, C. (2024). Wastewater remediation using bionanocomposites. In Advances in Bionanocomposites (pp. 293-326). Elsevier. Sen Gupta, R., Samantaray, P. K., & Bose, S. (2023). Going beyond Cellulose and Chitosan: Synthetic Biodegradable Membranes for Drinking Water, Wastewater, and Oil–Water Remediation. ACS omega, 8(28), 24695-24717. (Invited contribution for Dr. Samantaray) Samantaray, P. K. (2023). Recent advances in antiviral coatings on facemasks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Smart Nanomaterials to Combat the Spread of Viral Infections, 267-293. Samantaray, P. K., Sen Gupta, R., & Bose, S. (2023). Self‐Assembly in “Matrix‐Free” Functionalized Boron Nitride Sheets as Free‐Standing Thin Film Sieves for Stable Forward Osmosis and Robust Dye Removal Applications. Advanced Sustainable Systems, 7(3), 2200385. Samantaray, P. K., Ellingford, C., Farris, S., O’Sullivan, D., Tan, B., Sun, Z., ... & Wan, C. (2022). Electron beam-mediated cross-linking of blown film-extruded biodegradable PGA/PBAT blends toward high toughness and low oxygen permeation. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 10(3), 1267-1276.
