2023 Awardee: Saurabh Kapoor

Saurabh Kapoor, Ph.D., leads the Glass Research and Development division at Sterlite Technologies Limited in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India and is a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Metallurgical Engineering & Material Science, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, working on leucite based glass-ceramics for dental applications. He obtained his Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering from the University of Aveiro, Portugal. Prior to this, he earned his Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Physics from the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India. Furthermore, Dr. Kapoor held postdoctoral positions at the Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University and Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey.

Dr. Kapoor started working in the field of bioactive glasses and glass ceramics during his internship in the field of bioactive glasses in 2010 and later when he started his Ph.D. work in 2011 on “Alkali-free bioactive glasses for bone regeneration applications” in the Department Materials and Ceramic Engineering, University of Aveiro, Portugal. Dr. Kapoor successfully completed his Ph.D. in 2014 publishing over 9 articles in the field of bioactive glasses in a short span. His dissertation addressed key issues in the development of a new concept of glass/glass-ceramic for bone regeneration applications with a formulation of glasses that exhibit good sintering ability and mechanical strength, high bioactivity with controlled chemical degradation, while remaining amorphous on sintering up to achieving full densification. This singular achievement represented a significant a break-through in the field of glass science, particularly in the specific area of bioactive glasses. As such, Dr. Kapoor’s work resulted in a commercially viable product, which was patented and licensed and is commercially available with the trade name “Ceragraft®”.

During his career, Dr. Kapoor has published 25 research articles in scientific journals of high repute, which received more than 700 citations (h index: 16). Owing to his contributions to the field of glass science, Dr. Kapoor has been recently conferred upon with the “2021 Dr. R. L. Thakur Memorial Award” by the Indian Ceramic Society.

Dr. Kapoor is a member of the American Ceramic Society and is an active volunteer for the last 2 years at the “ACerS Mentor Programs” training young students and is co-organizer for the session “Glasses, Glass-Ceramics, and Glass-based Biomaterials” at the Annual Glass & Optical Materials Division (GOMD) Meeting (2022 and 2023). Further, Dr. Kapoor is a member of the esteemed International Commission on Glass (ICG) technical committee on biomedical glasses (TC-04), and Photonic glasses & optical fibers (TC20).