Dr. SOMADITYA SEN is an Associate Professor in Physics department at INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY INDORE, also serving as an Adjunct Associate Professor at MING CHI UNIVERSITY of TECHNOLOGY, Taiwan.

He works on STRUTURE CORRELATED PROPERTIES of magnetic oxide semiconductors. Co-doping in simple and complex (perovskite/double perovskite) oxides and explores functionalities on the application side.

Dr. Sen received his PhD from Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Jadavpur University. His doctoral thesis was on "Electrical and Structural properties of some Semiconducting Alkaline Earth Vanadate Glasses". After spending a brief period of three years teaching in a school in Kolkata, India, he went abroad with the thirst of better research. His passion for both teaching and research made him chose his profession in this domain of academics. He spent a brief postdoc in National Taiwan University from Jan 2003 to Aug 2003.

During his second postdoc at University of Electrocommunications, Chofushi, Tokyo, Japan he worked on "Synthesis and Non-destructive Detection/Characterization of Ge Nanodots".

He later moved to USA in Jan, 2006. He worked as a postdoc fellow with Prof Nikolai Kouklin at the Electrical Engineering Department of University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, for a year, on "Semiconductor Nanomaterials Synthesis and Device properties". He later moved to work with Prof Prasenjit Guptasarma of Physics department in the same university as a Research Associate and Scientist. He worked on several projects related to magnetic and multiferroic materials. At this point he got the priviledge of working at different internationally famous research institutes including "Advanced Photon Source" at "Argonne National Laboratory", "LANSCE" at "Los Alamos National Laboratory", "Synchtron Research Center" of University of Wisconsin Madison, etc.

He returned to India, in Jan 2013, as a Visiting Associate Professor in the Centre of Surface Science and Engineering of Indian Institute of Technology Indore. He joined IIT Indore as a permanent faculty member in October 2013 in the Department of Physics. During his first two years while he was still setting up his lab and research group he was given the responsibilities of taking care of promotion of IIT Indore's research capabilities. While SMART group was formed in July 2014, he was bestowed additional responsibilities of taking care of construction of the new campus at remote Simrol. He was later appointed Associate Dean Planning II in Aug 2015 and thereafter Associate Dean Planning I in Jan 2016. For a brief amount of time he assumed the position of Acting Dean Planning from April 2016 to Aug 2016. During this period of his associate deanship, he fascilitated partial construction of the new campus just enough to transfer the three temporary campuses of IITI to the permanent campus in Simrol. He also served as one of the Board of Governers of IIT Indore during the period Jan 2016 to Dec 2017. After his release from planning position, he entirely concentrated into research trying to graduate his doctoral researchers. In 2017 SMART group published 16 publications and until Sept 2018 the group already published 10 more. Two of his students have graduated and has been placed abroad. Within March 2019, another five students are expected to graduate. These students graduate with an avarage 5 first author publications in reputed journals and several other contributory publications and conference proceedings. After the graduation of two PhD students the group now has eight more PhD students. A NPDF and Institute postdoc fellows have been working in the group. One of them is presently a DST Women Scientist. By March 2019, five more PhD graduations are expected. The group also encourages young undergraduates from engineering and science background to work closely in the lab. Presently the lab is well connected with MCUT, Taipei and students travel as interns, masters students and postdocs.

Investigations on photosensitivity and chemosensitivity properties are some routine experiments performed in his simple lab. A new look of utilizing some high dielectric constant materials with low losses are being investigated in the light of dielectric resonator antennas. Single phase materials is a major criteria of my research of which electrical (conductivity, dielectric, ferroelectric, piezoelectric, thermoelectric, sensitivity, etc.), optoelectronic (bandgap, defects, bandtayloring, etc.), mechanical, and many more aspects are investigated.

Dr. Sen has his collaborators in USA, Taiwan, Japan and India. Apart from just scientific research, his group trains interns from different levels starting from high school, B.Tech/B.Sc., M.Tech/M.Sc. levels. Several of these interns go for summer internship at different labs abroad. Several high school students too have benefitted from the experience gathered in his laboratory.

The SMART lab is basically a simple synthesis lab where high purity complex materials are synthesized which are structurally designed to produce multiferroic properties. Such facilities present in-house are some very basic characterization techniques like a synthesis lab, a XRay Diffractometer and some transport property measurement facilities. The group maintains strong connection with RRCAT, UGC-DAE Indore and other research institutes in India.

The PERSON

Dr Somaditya Sen, apart from being a scientist and educator, also has an artistic aspect of his personality. He used to regularly write in online Bengali poetry forums during the time 2002-2005. Some of his writings were later published in the form of a book. His interest in painting and photography is noticeable. He takes immense interest in Indian music especially Rabindrasangit and spiritually inclined music and songs. Recently, he has become inclined towards Karnataki devotional songs especially motivated by the renderings of Mr. Kuldeep M. Pai.

The TEACHER

Dr. Sen experimental condensed matter physicist. Apart from teaching techniques in material characterization and related theory, he takes classes on Classical Mechanics, Statistical Mechanis, Quantum Mechanics, Electrodynamics and Magnetism. The courses taken by him in the last few years are related to the above subjects, PH106 and PH601 related to Electrodynamics, PH613 related to Statistical and Quantum Mechanics, PH603 related to Classical Mechanics, PH712 related to Magnetism and MSE601 related to Surface Science and Engineering. He has also taken responsibilities of conducting Physics lab at BTech level and MSc levels. At present he is in charge of the BTech lab.

The Researcher

As a researcher Dr Sen requires his students to answer the question "Why?", "Why not?", and "How?". Injected in this ideology mostly by his mentor Prof. Prasenjit Guptasarma at UWM, Dr Sen believes in quality of research. The details and record-keeping of research is one of the most important factors essential for benevolent research. Indeed difficult initially, the positive aspect of this is realized by most of his students in due course of time. Dr Sen extensively acknowledges Prof Guptasarma for the same.

The Administrator

The most significant role at IIT Indore has been to carry out as a Board of Governer and be the Acting Dean Planning during one of most critical times of IITI. During the period Feb 2013 to Dec 2017 he was heavily busy with administration. Initially while not involved in Planning office he took a leading role in interacting with important personalities in Indian science scenario. He has lead research teams to exhibit the science case of IITI in important events like "Indo-French Technology Fair 2013", "Indo-US Technology Fair 2014" and "Indian International Science Fair 2015".