About
Welcome!
I earned my undergraduate degree in Zoology and a post-graduate degree in Environmental Science from the University of Calcutta, India. After graduation, I have worked as a project assistant for the Global Change Program at Jadavpur University. I joined Tennessee State University (TSU) in 2015, where I worked on a research project related to environmental remediation for my MS thesis that was focused on the adsorption of antibiotics by soil minerals.
Currently, I am an Environmental Systems PhD candidate at Asmeret Asefaw Berhe's Soil Biogeochemistry lab at the University of California, Merced where I study buried soil organic carbon vulnerability due to change in the climate. My research will help us to understand the variability in soil organic carbon, mechanisms that control the storage of deep soil carbon, and will predict the future disturbances that can affect the soil carbon stock and release of CO2 to the atmosphere.
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Feel free to get in touch with me to say hi or for more information about my work.
My Research
Oxytetracycline sorption on kaolinite: a macroscopic and spectroscopic investigation
I was involved in conducting basic sorption studies using antibiotic oxytetracycline (OTC) and soil mineral kaolinite. For molecular level analysis, I was conducting in situ Attenuated total reflection- Fourier-transform infrared’ spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) experiments to collect IR spectroscopic scans of OTC binding on kaolinite in real-time under various solution properties ( various concentration of OTC at various pH). My research found increasing loadings of OTC and varying solution pH have significant effects on the binding modes. The IR bands revealed that OTC mainly binds with amide (-CONH2), carbonyl (>C=O), and dimethylamino groups (-NMe2) on kaolinite. In addition, I also looked at the influence of phosphate (P) on OTC sorption on kaolinite. The data indicated that at 1:1 ratio (OTC: P), P does not influence the sorption of OTC. At a higher ratio such as 1:10, P co-adsorbs with OTC. However, P did not affect the IR peaks of OTC. My research demonstrated the utility of using in situ ATR-FTIR spectroscopy in deciphering sorption mechanisms. This spectroscopic technique allows the interaction mechanisms to be viewed in real-time under various solution properties, which are otherwise not possible by using conventional ex-situ ATR-FTIR studies. Also, this technique allows one to study the sorption mechanism at very low concentrations (e.g. as low as 5 µM), which is not feasible using ex-situ ATR-FTIR. Finally, my data will help understand the binding mechanism of OTC and P and how they interact with each other on kaolinite at various environmental conditions similar to experimental solution properties, and it will help determine a remediation process for contaminants in the future. During my MS at Tennesse State University, our lab was equipped with several instruments (HPLC, ICP-OES, ATR-FTIR, and UV-VIS) through which I have also gained ample experience in using other techniques.
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Soil Organic Carbon Persistence in a Buried Soil and its Vulnerability due to
Future Climate Change
Soils store about 3000Gt of carbon (C), more than all the C in the atmosphere and vegetation globally combined. The soil system is an important part of the solution to climate change. Carbon stored in subsoils, below 1 m, represents more than half of the global soil organic carbon (SOC) stock and soil C sequestration in subsoils is a natural, viable, and cost-effective solution for climate change mitigation. Paleosols or buried soils provide powerful insights to enable the prediction of future soil processes, landscape disturbance, C persistence, and even vegetation, and climate when the soil was formed. We can use the knowledge derived from buried soils as a model system to understand the C accumulation, long time stabilization, and its vulnerabilities to climate change in deep soil horizons. One important aspect of my proposed research is to determine the vulnerability of soil C due to spatial location of C along with different landform positions and associated soil organic matter (SOM) protection mechanism [due to physical isolation, chemical interaction with minerals, and molecular composition that can differ in a tableland (summit) where soil physical and chemical protection will be more compared to an erosional (slope) landform] thus providing a unique opportunity to predict the response of soil C in two different landscapes to climate change. I propose to investigate C persistence in buried vs moderns soil layers including impacts of the shift in vegetation and burial, role of different polyvalent cations and mineral association with SOM; and finally, the effect of anticipated changes in precipitation on buried SOM in different landform (burial and erosional) scenarios in the central Great Plains.
Contact Me
5200 Lake Rd, Sustainability Research and Engineering Building, Room 464, Merced, CA 95343