Our group specialises in water and wastewater treatment. We have developed cheap and effective pollutant removal technologies which includes community scale hand-pump attachable arsenic removal filter using indigenous materials to achieve international drinking water standard. This filter is the most economical amongst the available technologies for arsenic removal and more than fifty units are installed and functioning across India.

water is no longer a safe and free commodity because most perennial Indian rivers are polluted with persistent organic pollutants. Thus provision of clean and safe potable water to all sections of society is the key challenge faced by our nation today. Clean water is also the key to enable Indian industries to produce goods of environmentally acceptable quality.

We all want our painted walls to have uniform colour and be free of surface cracks or warps. This is achieved by formulating paints that dry homogeneously and do not crack or de-bond from the surface during drying.

Due to wide spread industrialisation, the environment is always challenged with the discharge of large number of chemical species, some of which are dangerous and toxic to human health. Among these, mercury and cyanide are two important ions having deleterious effect on human health. For example, cyanide compounds (like HCN, CNCl, NaCN, and KCN) are discharged into the environment due to the increased utility of these in many chemical processes (such as electroplating, plastics manufacturing, tanning, and metallurgy) to an extent of 900-1000 tons/year.

Increasing level of CO 2 in the environment owing to anthropogenic activities is one of the pressing global issues that needs immediate resolution. Ever increasing development of industries and human population will produce more and more CO 2 emission by continuous consumption of fossil fuels. The immediate challenge is to improve the current technologies which can capture CO 2 efficiently and convert it into useful sustainable fuels (i.e. methane and methanol) in presence of natural resources such as water and sun light.

Each year during the winter season (December-January), dense fog engulfs the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) in South Asia, extending over a stretch of 1500 km, for more than a month disrupting day-to-day life of millions of people living in the IGP. Increasing air pollution combined with sufficient moisture available due to the passage of frequent north-westerlies favor fog formation in this region. Trends in poor visibility suggest a significant increase in worsening air quality and foggy days over the IGP.

Aerosols are tiny suspended particles released in the atmosphere from natural and anthropogenic emissions/processes such as dust storms, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, vehicular and industrial emissions, etc. Aerosol particles are a significant part of our weather and climate system, and due to their complex interactions with clouds and rainfall processes, these tiny particles (although emitted in large concentrations in the air), they pose a large uncertainty in our in depth understanding of clouds, rainfall, and the overall climate system.

Disposal of waste foundry sand (WFS) remains one of the major challenges faced by the foundry industry today. India’s annual casting production is around 9.3 million tons which is the third highest in the world.WFS contains toxic heavy metals and particulate matter which makes dumping of waste sand an environmental and health hazard. More than 80% of Indian foundries (i.e. more than 3600) are medium and small scale foundries which cannot afford costs associated with the dumping and treatment of waste foundry sand.

Mountain belts like the Himalaya have both sustained and destroyed humans and closely affect our lives. Mountain building processes result in earthquakes and landslides which are major hazards to the human civilisation. Major earthquakes that activate the main frontal thrust (MFT) are particularly devastating.My research group is involved in understanding the kinematics of the Himalaya that result in the these earthquakes by undertaking a detailed study of the main frontal fault zone that results in extreme pulverisation of the rocks (Fig. 1) and building of Himalayan topography (Fig. 2).

Microbes play an important role in modifying depositional dynamics of sedimentation systems. Microbes dominated the Precambrian biosphere and were limited to stressful depositional conditions in Phanerozoic. Microbially mediated sedimentation is well known in Precambrian. However, microbe- sediment interaction is less studied in Precambrian siliciclastics.Microbes play an important role in modifying depositional dynamics of sedimentation systems. Microbes dominated the Precambrian biosphere and were limited to stressful depositional conditions in Phanerozoic.

Floods in cities are an increasingly frequent phenomenon across the world, especially in coastal urban areas. However even well governed, well-equipped, well-financed urban governance institutions, disaster management agencies, and municipal bodies are unable to either reduce flood related disaster risk, or mitigate the risk of flooding. Despite the availability of high-tech equipment, simulation and prediction models, and research inputs from scientists and social scientists, this continues to be the situation whether in Asia, Europe or North America.

Oil spill, due to collisions or grounding of ships, is one of the most devastating forms of pollution in the marine environment. The impact of an accidental oil spill could be tremendous on marine ecosystem, coastal economy and other activities. Heavy vessel traffic in and out of the major commercial ports, such as Jawaharlal Nehru Port and Mumbai port has made the coastline of Mumbai vulnerable for oil spill incidents.

The Thane creek which houses two major commercial ports; Mumbai & Jawaharlal Nehru Ports faces periodic siltation problems. The maintenance dredging, carried out to keep navigational channel navigable, incurs high annual cost. A detailed understanding of the dominant processes causing morphological changes is required in tackling the problem of siltation.An attempt has been made to simulate the annual morphological change soccurring within Mumbai port limits, using a process-based hydrodynamic and morphological numerical model.

A team of scientists from five different institutions: National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai Integrated Coastal and Marine Area Management Project Directorate (ICMAM PD), Chennai; National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa; and National Central University (NCU), Taiwan led by IIT Bombay has successfully demonstrated the joint capabilities through a one-day field measurement campaign to estimate the nearshore dynamics along Pondicherry coast, located about 150 kms south of Chennai.

Tidal energy is one of the most promising resources of marine renewable energy. In India, Gulf of Khambhat, Gulf of Kutchh in Gujarat state and delta of Ganga in Sunderbans, West Bengal state are potential sites for generating tidal power. The aim of the research study is to estimate the tidal power potential along the Gulfs of Khambhat and Kutch. Two independent hydrodynamic models have been developed to estimate the spatial and temporal distributions of tidal energies in these Gulfs.

Hydrological studies in regions with sparse rain gauge networks are limited by the availability of rainfall data. Hence, a regionalisation approach becomes critical in modeling extreme events such as floods. A comprehensive framework is put forward for generating regionalised design rainfall time series, which can serve as a vital tool for data-scarce catchments prone to flood disasters. To demonstrate the framework, Jagatsinghpur district, a highly flood prone region in Odisha (India) is selected.

Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR) is the major component of the Asian summer monsoon, which provides an 80% of the total annual rainfall in India, from June to September, which is critically important for agricultural productivity and GDP. However, global and local environmental changes are likely to introduce non-stationarity in the characteristics of ISMR extremes.

Urban populations (and the associated resource consumption) are one of the largest contributors to the global energy consumption and environmental impact. In India, there is continuous increase in urbanisation and almost 1/3 rd of the population is already staying in urbanised areas. With the challenges of global warming and other diverse environmental pressures on earth, it has become essential to decouple the growth from resource consumption such that there will be less pressure on the environment due to human activities.

It is evident in the history of life through time that diversification of biotic communities was driven by evolutionary innovations and environmental changes. The Earth’s climate passed through several episodes of greenhouse to icehouse conditions. Organisms responded differently to the climate change at regional and global scales. The Micropalaeontology Lab at IIT Bombay is pursuing research to understand how a unicellular, marine organism, called foraminifera, responded to climate change in the Cenozoic Era, the last 65 million years of the Earth’s history.

Alkalophile microbes are known to consume urea and form calcium carbonate. Only recently this ‘natural cement’ has been used to bond loose granular soil particles to improve their strength and solve other geotechnical issues such as increase liquefaction and earthquake resistance, reduce soil erosion and restore brown field sites. The success of this method depends upon the precise environment conditions for the organisms to secrete one or more of their metabolic products. The temperature and pH must be ‘just right’.