Director

Prof. P. B. Sunil Kumar, Professor and Director of IIT Palakkad, is a renowned physicist known for his research on soft matter and biological physics. He is also a Professor at the Department of Physics at IIT Madras. After completing his MSc in Physics from Calicut University in 1987 and PhD from Raman Research Institute in 1994, he worked as a Post Doctoral Fellow in Raman Research Institute, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Max Planck Institute for KG Golm till 1999. He joined IIT Madras as an Assistant Professor of Department of Physics in 1999 and has been a Professor in the department from 2006 till being appointed as Director, IIT Palakkad in January 2017. He is also a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He was recently selected for Prof M V Pylee Award for the distinguished academician of India in 2019 by the Cochin University of Science and Technology. His current research interests include fields of active systems, polyelectrolytes, membranes, and rheological properties of micellar solutions. Apart from being an accomplished academic, he is also a voracious reader, an avid trekker and a nature-lover who enjoys baking and gardening.