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Biography
Dr. Akshay Kumar is Senior Research Fellow and Facility Manager of the DNP MAS NMR facility at Sir peter Mansfield Imaging Center at the University of Nottingham. He develops and applies dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP)-enhanced solid-state NMR to reveal the atomic-scale structures of materials that remain inaccessible to conventional techniques. His research spans from the molecular architecture of native plant cell walls to the chemistry of high-performance polymers, advancing both fundamental science and sustainable technologies.
Dr. Kumar earned his PhD at Université Grenoble Alpes, France under the supervision of Dr. Gaël De Paëpe and Dr. Sabine Hediger, where he pioneered DNP methods that provided unprecedented insight into biopolymer structures. He then joined Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Arno Kentgens, extending these approaches to synthetic polymers and leading projects on large-scale recycling. He has collaborated with world leading companies such as DSM, Teijin Aramids and KINGFA, and academic groups of leading groups including Prof. Ben Feringa at Univ. Of Groningen, while funded by Dutch Polymer Institute Eindhoven. He has published his work in leading international journals, including Polymer, Chemical Science, and RSC Green Chemistry.
At Nottingham, Dr. Kumar manages the DNP MAS NMR platform, enabling collaborations across chemistry, physics, and materials science, while continuing to push the boundaries of molecular-level characterization for materials of the future.