Ramachandra Rao Dasari

Ramachandra Rao Dasari was born in India in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh. He had all his education in India receiving B.Sc. in 1954 from Andhra University, M.Sc. in 1956 from Benares Hindu University and Ph.D. in 1960 from Aligarh Muslim University. He joined the faculty of the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1962 and became a full professor in 1973. During this period, he spent two years at MIT (1966-68) as a visiting scientist and gained valuable experience in the fabrication of lasers and research in laser physics. Prof. Dasari's major accomplishments at IIT, Kanpur include building one of the largest Laser laboratories for university research in India,(many lasers were actually built at IIT Kanpur) training large number of Ph.D students in laser research and interactions with R&D laboratories such as Central Electronics Ltd, New Delhi, and Bharat Heavy Electricals, Hyderabad for laser technology based instrumentation. As Physics panel member of UGC, he has initiated number of new initiatives for improvements in undergraduate education and organized workshops for training of teachers. Besides laser fabrication he also worked in high resolution spectroscopy of simple molecules, vibrational-rotational relaxations in infrared and laser spectroscopy of rare-earth ions in single crystals. He left IIT Kanpur in 1978.

CANADA AND USA

Prof. Dasari spent a year (1978-79) as a visiting Senior Research Officer at the National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa and another year (1979-80) as visiting Scientist at the Department of Physics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He joined MIT in 1980 as a visiting Professor of Physics. In 1981 he was appointed Principal Research Scientist in Spectroscopy Laboratory. In 1984 he was appointed as Assistant Director of the Spectroscopy Laboratory and later promoted as Associate Director in 1992. He oversees project coordination and facility developments of the National Institute of Health supported MIT Laser Biomedical Research Center and also coordinates research programs associated with the National Science Foundation supported Laser Research facility. His major research activities are laser biomedical studies leading to spectral diagnosis of disease using several techniques like scattering, reflectance, fluorescence, and Raman spectroscopy. Specifically, detection of early stages of cancer in several organs of the body including breast, colon, bladder, esophagus, uterine cervix, and oral cavity is the major theme of research. Also he is involved in the extensive studies that are conducted in vitro and in some cases in vivo related to atherosclerosis in coronary, femoral and carotid arteries. His other research relates to low coherence interferometry for detection of nanometer motions in cells and neurons, Dicke narrowing in infrared transitions, laser nuclear studies, molecular collisions and dynamics and single atom laser.

PUBLICATIONS

Dr. Dasari's research publications numbering close to 200 in referred journals which include Physical Rev. Letters, Physical Review, Nature, Optics Letters, Applied Optics, Journal of Quantum Electronics, Applied Spectroscopy, , Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, Cancer Research, Gastro Enterology, etc. He has given numerous lectures at universities in the U.S.A., Canada, and India and participated in several international conferences. Under his supervision, twelve students have received Ph.D.degrees and several students received M.S./M.Tech degrees.