Prof. P. B. Sunil Kumar
Department of Physics, IIT Madras

Complex Fluids and
Biological Physics Laboratory
&
Centre of Excellence in
Soft and Biological Matter (CSBM) @IIT Madras

Prof. P B Sunil Kumar

Chair Professor 
Department of Physics 
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

Academics

Fellowship of the academies

Fellow of the Indian academy of sciences, Jan 2016
Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, October 2022

Administrative Responsibilities

Director, IIT Palakkad: 2017- 2022
Professor in Charge, IIT Palakkad: 2015-2017
Head, Department of Physics, IIT Madras: 2012-2015
Chairman, Computer Centre, IIT Madras : 2012 January – 2012 May
Head, Department of Physics, IIT Hyderabad: 2009-2012 
Professor in Charge,  High Performance Computing Environment, IITM: 2007-2014

Other Academic Responsibilities

JSPS invitation fellowship 2015
Associate Member: MEMPHYS center for physics of biological membranes University of Southern Denmark: July 2007-July 2014
Post Doctoral Fellow, IMSc. Chennai, India: 1995-1997
Post Doctoral Fellow, Raman Research Institute, India: 1994-1995
Research Fellow, Raman Research Institute, India: 1988-1994
Post Doctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute,Teltow, Germany: 1997-1999

Research

Computational
Physics

Soft Condensed
Matter

Statistical
Physics

Multi-Scale Simulations

Large Scale Parallel Computing

Awards & Recognition

Notable Awards

Prof M V Pylee Award for the distinguished academician of India in 2019, instituted by the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT)

Membership in societies

Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Member of the Biophysical Society

Teaching

Courses

Courses taught for undergraduate and graduate students

  • Electrodynamics
  • Statistical Physics
  • Classical Mechanics
  • Simple and Complex Fluids
  • Computational Physics and Numerical Methods
  • Parallel programming using OpenMP, MPI and CUDA

Research Supervision

  • Supervised 14 doctoral theses and currently guiding 3 more
  • Directed numerous Master’s level research projects
  • Expertise in areas ranging from Physics, chemical engineering, biotechnology and engineering physics

Publications

  • Papers in International Journals -83
  • Books chapters – 4
  • Book edited : Rheology of Complex Fluids – Springer 2010

Video course

  • Video course on Numerical methods and programming
  • NPTEL course
  • 38 lectures
  • Viewed 100,000+ times
  • Co-authored an NPTEL web course on Numerical methods and programming

Science Outreach Activity

  • Active participation in popularizing science for children
  • Delivered numerous seminars  at high schools and junior colleges on science and technology.
  • Active member of the  Tamil Nadu Science Forum, a state level non profit volunteer  organization for dissemination of science
  • Editor for the science magazine for high school children – Jantar Mantar, published by Tamil Nadu Science Forum