Dr. Gaurav Arya

I researched Dr. Gaurav Arya, who is currently an associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials science at Duke University. He received his Bachelor's in Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (India) in 1998, earned his PhD at the University of Notre Dame in 2003, and completed his Postdoc at Princeton University from 2003-2005. He was then an Assistant Research Scientist at New York University from 2005-2007. From there, he ended up at Duke University being appointed not only as an associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, but also an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and an Associate Professor of Chemistry. He heads a research lab which combines technology, physics, biology, biostatistics, and chemistry to help students gain a "molecular-level understanding of  biological and soft-material systems, with the aim of discovering new phenomena and developing new technologies". He divides his current research interests into four categories: genome organization and regulation, polymer-nanoparticle composites, viral-DNA-packaging, and DNA nanotechnology. 

One paper that was published pretty recently (on October 30 by Dr. Arya and Brian Hyun-Jong Lee (a student at Duke pursuing his PhD) was titled "Analytical van der Waals interaction potential for faceted nanoparticles". Using calculus, physics, and technology, they were able to come up with an analytical model for van der Waals forces between faceted nanoparticles. They were able to compute exact atomistic calculations and compared them to the model and they ended up yielding only insignificant errors in predicted energies across all relevant particle configurations. In addition, they also developed a user-friendly interface application for implementing the model. Furthermore, this model is useful in the sense that it will help reduce the amount of work in future faceted nanoparticle investigations that require the calculation of interparticle interactions. This paper is representative of the type of work that Dr. Arya does in his lab, where he works with other students to produce other publications and papers, such as "Kinetically assembled binary nanoparticle networks" and "Orientational phase behavior of polymer-grafted nanocubes".

The work that Dr. Arya publishes shows that there are not only a lot we still can learn when it comes to the realm of biophysics, but also that there are many useful applications the result from his research. For example, in a basic chemistry class, you would learn about Van Der Waals forces but not actually understand the mechanics behind them. Not only did Dr. Arya and Brian Hyun-Jong Lee explore that, but they were able to come up with a model that predicts the interactions between those nanoparticles and the Van Der Waals forces. 

Sources: 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gaurav_Arya3

https://mems.duke.edu/faculty/gaurav-arya