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Faculty Spotlight

Q: Which UNH associate professor has brought an Atomic Force microscope to campus?
A: Dr. Saion Sinha, associate professor of Physics and a University Research Scholar.

Looking to Stretch the Boundaries of Research
With New Tools and New Ideas
Anyone who thinks the competition to get into colleges in the United States has grown out of control might want to take a look at India. There, in Saion Sinha’s youth, about a quarter of a million students took the test to enter the Indian Institute of Technology.

Just 2,000 – or less than one percent - were accepted.

Competition being what it was, once the test scores were assessed, students were told what category they had fallen into. High scorers picked whatever major they wanted while those with lower scores were faced with limited choice of majors.

"In India only after high school, you had to decide what you wanted to do – or a lot of times, you were forced into choosing by your parents – and you did that the rest of your life," said Dr. Sinha, an associate professor of Physics and a University Research Scholar. "We always had the fear that somehow we wouldn’t be able to do what we wanted, because if we didn’t do the right thing at the right time, we would fall off the ladder. When I came to the United States, I saw that students were a lot more relaxed. Here in the U.S., you can change your discipline anytime you want. Fortunately for me, I was fortunate enough to study the subject of my choice."

He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. He then moved to the University of Kentucky in Lexington for his PhD, then proceeded to do post-doctoral research work in Nanotechnology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Industry came calling, but he was determined to become an academic. He took a job as an assistant professor of Physics at Southern Connecticut State University, moving to the University of New Haven about six years ago.

He has immersed himself in the pursuit of Nanotechnology throughout his academic career, and most recently, in the possibilities of the University’s new Atomic Force Microscope. He won a partial grant from the Bayer Corporation to purchase the microscope, and immediately set to using it to study gunshot residue.

"This was a new application for the microscope, and the manufacturer believed it had a lot of potential, so they lowered the price of this expensive instrument by about 20 to 25 percent," Dr. Sinha says.

The Atomic Force microscope’s promise, has been, to date, not fully explored, although industry is seeking new ways to use its power, and Dr. Sinha is thinking mightily about its possibilities to perform some novel studies. He is currently using it to study Lyme-Disease-causing bacteria, working on faster analysis in collaboration with Dr. Eva Sapi, associate professor of the Department of Biology, and his Nano-Bio-Technology research group, consisting of three graduate students and one undergraduate. What scientists do know is that while an optical microscope can magnify an object about 3,000 to 4,000 times its original size, the Atomic Force microscope can provide a magnification one million times the original. The Atomic Force microscope also can be used to provide controlled movement in the microscopic scale.

"It has so much potential,” Dr. Sinha says. “Anybody who has this microscope considers new applications for it."