Ajay K. Sood

Ajay Kumar Sood was born on 26 June 1951, He obtained a BSc (Hons) degree in physics in 1971 and a MSc (Hons) degree in 1972 from Punjab University, Chandigarh. Four years later, he rose to the position of the chairman of the Division of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, IISc, which he held until 2008. Sood has also been holding the position of the honorary professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru since 1993. Sood lives in Bengaluru, Karnataka state, India, associating himself with the Indian Institute of Science and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. ==Research and legacy==

Sood has done research on hard condensed matter and soft condensed matter physics, with special emphasis on Raman scattering and nanotechnology. and single walled carbon nanotubes and optical phonons. They were successful in exciting squeezed phonon states in KTa03 crystals using femtosecond laser pulses and employing impulsive simulated Raman scattering. He has also shown that liquid flow in a singled walled carbon nanotube induces the voltage and current to flow along the floor direction of the tube. Other research efforts Sood has also experimented with soft condensed matter like micelle composed viscoelastic gels. He developed an ultrasensitive immunoassay by subjecting colloids to an electrical field, thus generating nonequilibrium phenomena. He has developed a medical diagnostic kit. Sood is now working on the modalities of enhancing the viscosity of a material by adding nanotubes without increasing its weight. ==Academic fellowships and positions==

Sood is a fellow of science academies and institutions such as the Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc) and holds the Bhatnagar Chair of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. and a former president of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 2010 to 2012 in 2008. He is also an editorial board member of the journals, Scientific Reports, Particle and EPL (Europhysics Letters). Sood has served on the scientific advisory committee to the prime minister of India from 2009 to 2014, and is the chairman of the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi. ==Awards and recognitions==

He was awarded Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, in 1990, by the Government of India. ==See also==