Welcome to the website of the Interdisciplinary Programme on Materials Science at IIT Kanpur. This interdisciplinary initiative was started more than 50 years back to encourage people from varied backgrounds to collaborate and come up with an academic programme to train manpower for harnessing the potential of materials to power our technological growth. The technologies of today use a large variety of materials with tailor-made properties, and stringent demands on performance much beyond that can be obtained from naturally occurring materials. Materials Science Programme here at IIT Kanpur has a very strong interdisciplinary approach with both students and faculties coming from different backgrounds. Our student intake is generally from engineering streams such as electrical, mechanical, materials, chemical and science streams of physics and chemistry. These students are put through a rigorous coursework giving them a solid grounding in fundamentals and application of material science. Subsequently, these students pursue independent projects with faculty members for their thesis in areas such as chemical sensors, Nano-composites, batteries, microwaves and multiferroic oxides. The reasonably good placement record for the department indicates that the training imparted to the students is well received, both in the industrial and the academic community.
Various academic institutions and research organizations also make use of the department’s knowledge to develop and improve the process and products. Inter-disciplinary knowledge of students from their graduating courses along with the specific in-depth domain knowledge in doctoral work make them good candidate for industrial application and academia, which is reflected in huge alumni profile.
Welcome Message
Welcome to the website of the Interdisciplinary Programme on Materials Science at IIT Kanpur. This interdisciplinary initiative was started more than 50 years back to encourage people from varied backgrounds to collaborate and come up with an academic programme to train manpower for harnessing the potential of materials to power our technological growth. The technologies of today use a large variety of materials with tailor-made properties, and stringent demands on performance much beyond that can be obtained from naturally occurring materials. Read More...
Prof. Raj Ganesh S. Pala
Head, Materials Science Programme
Email: headmsp@iitk.ac.in
- Ms. Sarika Yadav, working under the guidance of Prof. Raj Ganesh S. Pala, has been highly commended for presenting a 3-minute video entitled "Artificial Intelligence for Artificial Taste Sensing" in 'WiSe Video Competition' at IEEE BioSensors 2024, Cambridge, U.K.
- Mr. Gaurav Kumar, working under the guidance of Prof. Siddhartha Panda, was awarded "The First Prize" for the oral presentation at the International Conference on Emerging Trends in Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials (ETCEAM-2024), held at Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra, Ranchi, from December 13 to December 15, 2024.
- Ms. Namrata Pachauri, working under the guidance of Prof. Sri Sivakumar, was honored with the Best Poster Presentation Award at the Chemical Reaction Engineering Symposium (CRE-2024), held at CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, from December 5th to 7th, 2024.
- Ms. Preeti Sati, working under the guidance of Prof. Sri Sivakumar, received an Oral Presentation Prize in the "Young Researcher Award" category at the European Materials Research Society Spring Meeting (E-MRS) 2024 held in Strasbourg, France.
- Ms. Jyoti Yadav Conducted one session on design and fabrication of meta materials for strategic applications as speaker in Hands-on training workshop (Kaaryashala) MechMicroFab-2022 organized by Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.
- Ms. Jyoti Yadav working under the joint supervision of Prof . J. Ramkumar and Prof. K.V. Srivastava received the best paper award in All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research (AIMTDR 2023). The international conference was organized from December 8 to 10, 2023 at the Indian Institute of Technology BHU, Varanasi. The talk was titled "Fabrication Process Development of a Three-Dimensionally Rotated FSS Unit Cell for Wide-Angle Microwave Absorbers."
- Mr. Gaurav Kumar under the supervision of Prof. Siddhartha Panda has received the Best Poster Presentation Prize at SPSI-MACRO-2023 Conference held during 10 to December 13, 2023 at IIT Guwahati.
- Aritra Mukherjee (M.Tech. Student, MSP) working under the supervision of Prof. M. Jaleel Akhtar has received the Academic Excellence Award in M.Tech.( 2022 and 2023)
- Sugandha Singh (Ph.D. Student, MSP) working under joint supervision of Prof. Manas K. Ghorai and Prof. Kamal K. Kar, Journal Back cover selected and published in J. Mater. Chem. A. vol. 11, pp 8406-840, April 2023. DOI: 10.1039/D3TA90074F
- Selected Candidates in Ph. D. programme 2023-24- First Semester Result
- Mr. Harish Kumar (Ph.D. Student, MSP) has received Prime Minister's Research Fellowship (PMRF), working under joint supervision of Prof. Rajeev Gupta, Prof. Arunabh Meshram.
- Mr. Jitendra Tahalyani (Ph.D. Student, MSP) working under joint supervision of Prof. M. Jaleel Akhtar and Prof. Kamal K. Kar has received the Best Student Paper Award (Male Category) at the IEEE Microwave, Antennas, and Propagation Conference, held during December 12-14, 2022 at Bangalore.
- Mr. Jitendra Tahalyani (Ph.D. Student, MSP) working under joint supervision of Prof. M. Jaleel Akhtar and Prof. Kamal K. Kar has received the First Prize in Ph.D. Student Initiative Category at the IEEE International Microwave and RF Conference (IMaRC), held during December 17-19, 2021 at IIT Kanpur.
- MSP Brochure
- Shortlisting and Selection criteria for admission in M. Tech and Ph. D. Programme for 2025-26-I sem
- List of candidates called for the Ph. D. Online Interviews for 2025-26-first sem
- Admission Notice for PhD and M. Tech Programmes 2025-26-I Semester
- For all admission enquiry:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , 0512-259-7740
- A. Choudhary, J. Tahalyani and M. J. Akhtar, “Barium strontium titanate and exfoliated graphite nanocomposite integrated with frequency selective surface for enhanced radar absorption,” Mater. Today Commun. Vol 42, no. December 2024, p.11494, 2025,
doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mtcomm.2025.111494 - J. Yadav, Kajal Chaudhary, K. V. Srivastava, and J. Ramkumar, "Fabrication Process Development of a Three Dimensionally Rotated FSS Unit Cell for Wide-Angle Microwave Absorbers," All India Manufacturing Technology, Design and Research Conference (AIMTDR), Varanasi, India, December 8-10,2023.
Offline printing of proceedings - J. Yadav, M. Saikia, K. V. Srivastava, and J. Ramkumar, "Three-Dimensional Rotation of FSS Unit Cell in Broadband Microwave Absorber for Large Oblique Incidence Response," IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, vol. 65, no. 5, pp. 1320-1328, Oct. 2023.
DOI:10.1109/TEMC.2023.3288351. - J. Yadav, M. Saikia, K. V. Srivastava, and J. Ramkumar, "Miniaturized Metamaterial Absorber Using Lossy Effective Dielectric-Medium and Resistive Metasurface," International Conference on Metamaterials, Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics (META), Paris, France, July 18-21, 2023.
Offline printing of proceedings - J. Yadav, M. Saikia, K. V. Srivastava, and J. Ramkumar, "Design and Material Selection of Hexagon Inspired Dielectric Resonator Based Microwave Metamaterial Absorber," International Conference on Precision, Micro, Meso and Nano Engineering, COPEN-12, IIT Kanpur, India, December 8-10, 2022.
Offline printing of proceedings - J. Yadav, R. Vishwakarma, M. Saikia, K. V. Srivastava, and J. Ramkumar, "Enhancement of Oblique Incidence Performance of a Microwave Absorber Using Cylindrical Dielectric Resonator," IEEE Microwaves, Antennas, and Propagation Conference (MAPCON), Bengaluru, India, December 12-15, 2022.
DOI: 10.1109/MAPCON56011.2022.10047224 - R. Vishwakarma, J. Yadav, M. Saikia, A. Verma, and K. V. Srivastava, "Low-Cost Polarization Insensitive L Band FSS Absorber Based on Screen Printing Technique," IEEE Microwaves, Antennas, and Propagation Conference (MAPCON), Bengaluru, India, December 12-15, 2022.
DOI: 10.1109/MAPCON56011.2022.10047504 - Sugandha Singh, Manas K. Ghorai, Kamal K. Kar, Cobalt Nanoparticle-Modified π-Conjugated Mesoporous Polymers for Electrocatalysis, ACS Applied Nano Materials, 2023, 6, 15, 14011–14018, DOI: 10.1021/acsanm.3c01849
- Sugandha Singh, Manas K. Ghorai, Kamal K. Kar, A cobalt harnessed phenanthroline and triphenylamine-based conjugated mesoporous polymer designed by a donor-acceptor approach for trifunctional electrocatalysis, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2023, 11, 20290-20301, DOI: 10.1039/D3TA02847J
- Sugandha Singh, Manas K. Ghorai, Kamal K. Kar, Exploration of Cobalt (II) modification in Phenanthroline-based conjugated organic polymer towards trifunctional electrocatalysis, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2024, 12, 2400-2412, DOI:10.1039/D3TA04961B
- A tri-functional electrocatalyst and a process for preparing the same. Manas K. Ghorai, Kamal Krishna Kar, Sugandha Singh, Manish Kumar, Debabrata Samanta, Indian Patent, Application no: 202211022868 A, 19 April 2022, Patent number: 452907, Granted.
- A trifunctional electrocatalyst and process for synthesis thereof. Manas K. Ghorai, Kamal Krishna Kar, Sugandha Singh, Manish Kumar, Debabrata Samanta, Indian Patent, Application no: 202211035408, 21 June 2022, Patent number: 462768, Granted.
- Sugandha Singh, Manas K. Ghorai, Kamal K. Kar, Front cover selected and published in Royal Society of Chemistry, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2023, 11, 20275-20275, DOI: doi.org/10.1039/D3TA90208K
- Sugandha Singh, Manas K. Ghorai, Kamal K. Kar, Supplementary cover selected and published in American Chemical Society, ACS Applied Nano Materials, 2023, 6, 15, 13732-14620, https://pubs.acs.org/toc/aanmf6/6/15#
Alumni Messages
I was admitted in the Material Science Programme Department (MSP), IIT Kanpur as a PhD student in December2013. My work has been started in the direct supervision of Prof. M. Jaleel Akhtar and finished the thesis entitled “Development of Efficient RF Energy Harvesting Circuits for Low Power Applications” in October 2019.
With the vibrant, robust, and inclusive environment and world class research facilities, the MSP department has made research-intensive roots in the career of students. There is nowhere better place than IIT Kanpur to research the unknown and the unanswered prospects. Apart from the research, involvement of students in the extracurricular activities makes them move forward by engaging in respectful position at some reputed organisation.
Joining IIT Kanpur was one of the best decisions that I took. Material Science Programme provided me the exposure to inter disciplinary subjects and a plethora of knowledge to gain from them. The department aims at providing students with problem solving skills while working on real life challenges, which was the crux of my thesis work. The faculty is very helpful for all and any queries and believes in directing the students to reach their objective, rather than simply spoon feeding the solution. They have helped in strengthening my academic rigour and persistence for finding a solution instead of giving up.
“MSP is the culmination of ideas of basic sciences and engineering principles which makes it unique. It has flavours of physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, electronics/electrical engineering. It helps one to move beyond their comfort zone and dive into an interdisciplinary field of study, which is very much the need of the time. With programs like DAAD one can also get an international exposure and I was lucky to be the recipient of such an award.”
I had a great time at MSP, IIT Kanpur. The support that I received from the faculties and staff helped me shape my career. The best part about MSP is its interdisciplinary nature where we get to learn about different streams in one course.
My experience in the IIT Kanpur, MSP was tremendous. I found the course curriculum to be very challenging but rewarding. My degree in Material Science provided an ideal blend to develop analytical thinking and play around with data. I had many professors in the college who inspired my best efforts and who helped me a lot. The great emphasis on practical learning had helped me to sharpen my skills.
“I had joined the Master’s Program at IIT Kanpur in 2K14 immediately after completing my graduation. MSP being an interdisciplinary department not only offered diversity in learning but also enabled me on a personal level to meet some of the brilliant minds of India as course mates. Be it the guidance of professors or inputs from the course mates, each and every discussion added value to my skill-set which helped me evolve as an individual and assisted me with my professional journey since then. I started off my professional journey with Reach Ivy as Innovation Officer (Campus Placement), then joined a Noida based start-up MGINNE as Marketing and Product Manager and then joined Byjus where initially I was working in Business Development segment and lately started looking after Strategy and Operations of state UP for Byjus. For each milestone I have achieved, I owe my journey of learnings I had as a postgrad student at IIT Kanpur. Foremost I am immensely thankful to all the professors and my batch mates. MSP offers you everything you aspire for. It certainly is one of the best departments across IITs.”
“Two years at IITK were delightful as well as a great learning experience. The education and the vision provided by faculties at MSP are still turning out to be crucial for my current tenure. My time with my friends at IITK was memorable, developing into long-standing friendships.”
