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TURNING THE TABLE UPSIDE DOWN
The periodic table is immensely important for categorising many different properties of chemical elements but would turning it on its head (inverting the table) make some important aspects of it easier to understand and give everyone a new perspective on chemistry?
We invited experts from various disciplines to unpack how exploring the table from a new viewpoint would give rise to new ideas and how the table has constantly evolved in order to meet new challenges. The discussion was inspired by a study conducted by researchers at The School of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham.
About the Speakers
Shobhana Narasimhan is a Professor of Theoretical Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India. Her main area of interest is computational nanoscience. Her research examines how the lowering of dimensionality and reduction of size affect material properties. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India.
Sridhar Rajaram is a Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. His research interests lie in Organic Chemistry with a focus on developing new materials and new reactions. Rajaram’s group has developed novel electron transporters of organic solar cells. They have developed dendritic Raman markers for amplification free detection of viral-RNA. Currently, they are working on developing bio-degradable poly carbonates for replacing bis-phenol A based polymers. Apart from this, they are also working on developing novel metal-free catalysts that can be utilized synthesis of polymers.
Jahnavi Phalkey was appointed Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru in November 2018. Previously she was faculty at King’s College London. She started her academic career at the University of Heidelberg, following which she was based at Georgia Tech-Lorraine, France, and Imperial College London.
She was Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (the Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin). She was external curator to the Science Museum London, and has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum, Munich. Jahnavi is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India and has co- edited Science of Giants: China and India in the Twentieth Century. She holds a doctoral degree in history of science and technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
