People Prashant N. Kumta
Edward R. Weidlein Chair Professor Department of Bioengineering Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science Department of Oral Biology
Phone: 412-624-5014; 412-648-0223 Fax: 412-624-8069 Office: BENDM 849 EducationPhD (Materials Science), University of Arizona, 1990 M.S., Materials Science and Engineering, University of Arizona, 1987 B.Tech (Honors)., Metallurgical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, 1984 Professional InterestsProfessor Kumta’s research interests cover the two broad areas of Energy storage and Biomaterials. The main focus of research in both these areas is to develop novel low temperature approaches and study the relationships of the process parameters, the ensuing microstructure and crystallographic structure to the electrochemical activity in the former and biological response in the latter. Current research in the energy storage area has been directed towards understanding the theory of solid-state materials using first principles methods while developing novel low temperature chemical, mechano-chemical and thin film approaches to synthesize nanostructured particulate, nano-tubules, nano-structured composites, and nano-layered thin film architectures for lithium-ion applications. Research has also been conducted to develop indigenous low temperature sol-gel and template approaches for the synthesis of nanostructured particles and nanotube materials for supercapacitor applications as well as electro-catalysts for direct methanol, and hydrogen fuel cells. Fundamental research is also being conducted to explore alternative electronically conductive and electrochemically stable catalyst supports for developing novel electrolyzers for the efficient generation of hydrogen.
In the Biomaterials area, research is focused on developing novel low temperature metastable approaches under physiological conditions for the synthesis of nanostructured biocompatible ceramics, biocompatible bone cements, and hybrid natural polymer-nano-particulate ceramic systems useful in non-viral gene and protein delivery applications. A core fundamental research being conducted is to study the mineral-cell interface and the specific role of non-collagenous proteins (NCP) on the mineralization of calcium phosphate phases found in mineralized hard tissue. These studies in bio-mineralization will lead to the development of new potential scaffolds for mineralized tissue engineering. At the same time, these studies will further improve the understanding of the salient essential protein-mineral and cell-protein-mineral interface important for enhancing the current knowledge of hard tissue formation in bone tissue engineering. Another important aspect of the Biomaterials research program involving strong interaction with the Dental School is to study the role of bio-ceramics and genetically engineered proteins for engineering and design of new biomaterial interfaces and morphologies used to investigate stem cell plasticity.
Biography
Professor Kumta obtained his Bachelor of Technology with Honors in Metallurgical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India in 1984. This was followed by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Arizona in 1987 and 1990, respectively. He joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University following his graduation in 1990 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Full Professor with tenure in 1999. He also held joint faculty appointment in the Biomedical Engineering Department. He joined the University of Pittsburgh in 2007. Professor Kumta is the author and co-author of more than 150 refereed journal publications and has given more than 200 conference presentations with more than 66 invited presentations. He was also the recipient of the Research Initiation Award from the National Science Foundation in 1993 and has been continuously listed in Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in American Education since 1999. He was the founding organizer of the first symposium on “Electrochemically Active Materials for Energy Storage and Devices” for the Annual Meeting of the American Ceramic Society held in Indianapolis in 1995, and has been actively involved in its organization and execution to date. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Materials Science and Engineering, B, Advanced Functional Solid-State Materials, an International Journal by Elsevier Publications. Recent Publications:D. Choi and Prashant N. Kumta, “Surfactant Based Sol-Gel Approach to Nanostructured LiFePO4 for High Rate Li-ion Batteries”, J. Power Sources 163 (2007) 1064-1069. D. Choi, G.E. Blomgren and Prashant N. Kumta, “Fast and Reversible Surface Redox Reaction in Nanocrystalline Vanadium Nitride Supercapacitors”, Advanced Materials, 18 (2006)1178-1182. M.K. Datta, and Prashant N. Kumta, “Silicon, Graphite and Resin based Hard Carbon Nanocomposite Anodes for Lithium Ion Batteries”, J. Power Sources 165 (2007) 368-378. D. Olton, Jinhua Li, Mary E. Wilson, Todd Rogers, John Close, Leaf Huang, Prashant N. Kumta and Charles Sfeir, “Nanostructured Calcium Phosphates (NanoCaPs) for Non-Viral Gene Delivery: Influence of the Synthesis Parameters on Transfection Efficiency”, Biomaterials 28 (2007) 1267-1279. Hsu-Feng Ko, Charles Sfeir and Prashant N. Kumta, “In situ synthesis and characterization of porous polymer-ceramic composites as scaffolds for gene delivery”, Materials Science and Engineering C 27 (2007) 479-483. C.-C. Chang, O. Velikokhatnyi and P.N. Kumta, “Effect of Magnesium Substitution in Lithium Nickel Oxide: An Ab-initio Study, J. Electrochemical Society, 151 (12), J91-J94, (2004). I.S. Kim, G.E. Blomgren and P.N. Kumta, “Si/SiC Nanocomposite Anodes Synthesized using High-energy Mechanical Milling”, J. of Power Sources, 130, 275-280, (2004). Prashant N. Kumta, Charles Sfeir, Dong-hyun Lee, Dana Olton, Daiwon Choi, “Nanostructured Calcium Phosphates for Biomedical Applications: Novel Synthesis and Characterization”, Acta Biomaterialia 1, 65-83, (2005). J. Maranchi, A.F. Hepp and P.N. Kumta, “High Capacity Reversible Thin Film Silicon Anodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries”, Electrochemical and Solid State Letters 6 (9), A198- A201 (2003). J.Y. Kim, S. Narayanan, T. Waldez, and P.N. Kumta, “Sol-Gel Synthesis of High Surface Area Pt-Ru Electrocatalysts for Direct Methanol Fuel Cells”, J. Electrochemical Society 150 (11), A1421-A1431 (2003).
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