Dr. Sandip Kumar Saha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He works in the broad area of thermal energy storage, solar receivers, and cooling technologies. His primary research interest is exploring the different types of thermal energy storage for solar thermal applications. In recent years, he has been actively involved in developing and demonstrating new technologies for thermal energy storage, solar receiver, and green building.

Dr. Saha received his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He was with R&D TATA Steel, India, as a Researcher, and Applied Mechanics and Energy Conversion, Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, as a postdoctoral fellow before joining IIT Bombay as a faculty member in 2012. Since then, he has carried out several large, funded projects in thermal energy storage. Prof. Saha is a recipient of the Bhaskara Advanced Solar Energy (BASE) Fellowship, IUSSTF, 2016. He was awarded the IIT Bombay research award 2020. He is currently serving on the editorial boards of Scientific Reports.

Dr. Saha’s Fulbright-Nehru project aims to develop a new high thermal conductive solid-solid phase change material that can be stable for more than few thousands of thermal cycles for low-temperature solar applications (<80 C). A detailed investigation of the thermophysical properties using state-of-art experimental and computational facilities will be carried out to optimize the process parameters and the filler materials. Specifically, an emphasis will be given to understanding the contact between filler polymer interfaces and interfacial thermal resistance. For his teaching component, Prof. Saha is team-teaching a course on advanced engineering thermodynamics with his host. To ensure synergy between the two components, interested students from the course will be involved in analysing and thereby enhancing the performance of energy systems using thermal energy storage through the research work.