Short Bio:
Ramesh Laxminarayan Gardas was born and brought up in Surat, Gujarat. He completed B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Veer Narmad South Gujarat University. Then he joined University of Coimbra and University of Aveiro, Portugal, and Queen’s University Belfast, UK for his postdoctoral research on physico-chemical properties and applications of ionic liquids.
Then, Dr. Gardas joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, in August 2010, as an Assistant Professor in Chemistry, and promoted to Associate Professor in July 2015 and to full Professor in March 2020.
Dr. Gardas has more than 20-years of research and 10-years of teaching experience. So far, he completed 8 projects (as PI and Co-PI) worth more than Rs. 6.5 crores, guided 11 Ph.D. and 15 M.Sc. project students. Co-authored 4 patents, 4 book-chapters, 7 conference papers, and 160 research publications which received more than 6200 citations with h-index = 38 and average citations per paper of above 36. He delivered more than 160 invited talks and guest lectures.
Dr. Gardas’ research group focusses on ‘Chemical Thermodynamics’ and ‘Phase Equilibria’ of industrially important solvents and their mixtures. His research group, is unique in the country, focuses on both ‘Science’ and ‘Technology’ part of the contemporary field – “Ionic Liquids/ Deep Eutectic Solvents as an alternative to Volatile Organic Solvents” and significantly contributing in connecting them. His research group substantially contributed to the development of non-conventional and environmentally benign solvent systems. Generated extensive databases on their thermodynamic properties and structure-composition-property correlations useful in refrigeration, separation science, and crude oil industry. These will have far-reaching implications in the design of application-specific solvent systems. His research group strives to design the task-specific ionic liquids and to provide an important insight into physical chemistry to regulate their properties for varied technological applications such as phase change materials, CO2 capturing, dissolution of tank bottom sludge, electrolytes in solar cell and supercapacitors, absorbents for a refrigeration system, desulfurization of fuels, and also the extraction of metal ions, biomolecules, and value-added products.
More than 7500 thermodynamic data points measured in his research lab at IIT Madras are included in NIST Standard Reference Database developed by Thermodynamics Research Center, NIST, USA. Dr. Gardas developed a model to explain the density of a variety of ionic liquids over a wide range of temperature and pressure which is referred to and extensively used by the peer scientific community as 'Gardas and Coutinho' model.
In recognition of his outstanding performance as a researcher, Dr. Gardas has been bestowed with several awards by prestigious institutes/ societies including the Mid-Career R&D Award-2020 by IIT Madras. Recently, he has been recognized as (i) Associate Editor of Heliyon, Elsevier journal, (ii) Fellow Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), UK, (iii) Publons Top Peer Review Award 2019 (Top 1% of Reviewers in Chemistry), and (iv) one among the world's top 25 ‘Emerging Investigators’ by the Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data, an American Chemical Society Journal.
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