Dr Satnam Singh

I am Dr Satnam Singh, from Punjab (India). I did my masters in Physics from Panjab University, Chandigarhand PhD from IISER Mohali.  The title of my thesis is “Translational self-diffusion in small molecules investigated via NMR spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations.”

I can teach physics to undergraduate and graduate students.

In my Ph.D., I studied the diffusion of the molecules via nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR) and molecular dynamics simulations. The diffusion NMR is a purely experimental field, while the molecular dynamics simulation is a purely computation-based field. I have one publication in the diffusion NMR field and two sole author publications in the molecular dynamics field. In diffusion NMR, I studied the dynamics of polyethylene glycol(PEG) and Lithium perchlorate in the different types of molecular solvents. Lithium perchlorate is an excellent electrolyte and is used in different types of batteries. This study was helpful to understand the structural and dynamics-related properties of the PEG and Lithium perchlorate mixture. The data was acquired on Bruker’s 400MHz and 600MHz NMR machines and processed using Bruker’s topspin software.

The drug-lipid interactions studies are helpful to predict pharmacokinetic properties of drugs, such as their transport, biodistribution, accumulation, and efficacy. In molecular dynamics, I studied the dynamics of heroin drug molecule sandwiched inside the lipid membrane. I also studied the dynamics of fullerene(C60) molecules in the different types of benzene derived solvents. Fullerene is highly soluble in benzene-derived solvents. This study is helpful to understand the dynamical properties of fullerene in these solvents. For both works, data was produced using GROMACS software, and for visualization purpose, VMD, Chimera, and AVOGADRO were used. I extensively used C++ to handle the simulation data. To run the multiple commands, the basic level shell scripts were used.

For the last few years, I have been working in the field of quantum thermodynamics with particular focus on the study of thermal machines. I have extensive experience in dealing with the different models of heat engines and studying their optimal performance. I study the heat engines and refrigerators whose working substance is two-level system, harmonic oscillator and particle in the square well potential. I explored the different thermodynamical cycles e.g. quantum Brayton cycle, quantum Diesel cycle, and quantum Otto cycle.  I am interested to work in the diverse area of quantum thermodynamics.

 I have knowledge of three different fields: (1) diffusion NMR, (2) Molecular dynamics and (3)quantum thermodynamics.