Prof. Srikanth Sastry
M.Sc., 1986, Physics

Prof. Srikanth Sastry is a Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru. His research interest lies in the area of statistical mechanics, with a focus on understanding a range of unusual and interesting properties of liquids and other soft condensed matter, addressed with computation as a major tool. His significant research contributions involve the exploration of the energy landscape approach to glass forming liquids, analysis of fragility — the rapidity of change of dynamics — of glass formers, length scales relevant to slow relaxation, glass forming ability, jamming, mechanical behavior and memory in amorphous solids, anomalous behavior of water, liquid-liquid phase transition in water and silicon, etc.

Prof. Sastry did his M.Sc. in Physics from IIT Bombay in 1986 and Ph.D. from Boston University in 1993. Soon after his studies, Prof. Sastry joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Princeton University in 1996. In 1998 he was a Visiting Scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology/Arizona State University. He has served as a Faculty Fellow at the JNCASR between 1998-2003 and as an Associate Professor from 2003-2008. He worked as a Professor at the TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences in Hyderabad during 2012-2014.

Prof. Sastry has received many awards and accolades including J C Bose National Research Fellowship (2015), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (2008), Sir C V Raman Young Scientist Award by the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST), Swarnajayanti Fellowship (2003), B. M. Birla Science Prize (2001) and the Prof. C N R Rao Oration Award (2001).

In his free time, Prof. Sastry enjoys reading books on a range of topics, typically literature in English and Kannada. He is extremely fond of music and loves listening to Indian and western classical music and has a keen interest in jazz. Prof. Sastry loves traveling and hiking as much as he enjoys watching theater and other performing arts. He has recently taken to gardening.

Special Memories

The all inclusive Campus life of IIT Bombay -- with music, Mood Indigo, quizzes and sports, coexisting with the rigors of classes, labs and test; the way Prof. S.H. Patil's lectures were imparted; and the high standards and enthusiasm of many other faculty members, left an indelible mark on my personality. The intelligence and intensity of the self-assured and self-aware people, I encountered on Campus, which was initially daunting but eventually exhilarating, are some of the special memories of my college days at the Institute.