PhD completed in 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Kieran Hodnett, Dr Sarah Hudson and Dr Peter Davern at the Bernal Institute, University of Limerick, working on an SSPC project called, ‘Crystallisation of active pharmaceutical ingredients onto excipients’.
Thesis title: Role of Hydrogen Bonding Lifetime and Complementarity in Heterogeneous Nucleation.
Research Interests: Crystallisation of pharmaceutical active compounds in their different forms in the presence of excipients and studies their properties.
Background: After his PhD, Vivek joined the Nanotechnology Research Group at the Bernal Institute, University of Limerick, working on “Tailoring crystal size distributions for improved formulation” under the supervision of Prof. Kevin Ryan, a funded investigator in the Centre. Vivek is currently working on Continuous manufacturing of API nanoparticles using supercritical CO2 and their isolation.
My time and experience as a PhD student in SSPC was great, as SSPC provides the perfect environment for a PhD student to enhance their overall academic personality to be a successful researcher. I had a chance to visit Purdue University on a student exchange program as a visiting researcher in Prof. Zoltan Nagy’s research lab, where I was afforded the opportunity to work on continuous manufacturing and isolation of API nanoparticles using liquid anti-solvent approach.
My first publication was “Experimental Study on the Influence of Excipients on the Heterogeneous Crystallization and Dissolution Properties of an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient” published in “Crystal Growth & Design” journal (Impact factor: 3.97) in 2017. During my PhD, I have published four research articles in peer-reviewed journals.
SSPC support their PhD researchers to be in a position to present their research at conferences, workshops and symposiums, while also providing opportunities for collaboration and networking. For me it also provided an opportunity to be part of the organising committee for student conference organised as a part of 49th Annual British Association of Crystal growth conference held at the University of Limerick in June 2018. This was a great team building exercise and fantastic opportunity to run an event. SSPC also provides an excellent opportunity to every PhD and Post-doctorate researcher to be part of their science outreach programme involving showing science demonstrations to children at schools and encouraging them to pursue a career in science. This also helps to enhance the public engagement ability of the researchers.
My experiences and the unbelievable opportunity of industry placement with FMC Ireland Ltd. in Cork, not only helped with my decision to pursue a career in industry or academia, it offered me great training in new techniques I would not have had experience with before. I was given access to equipment, which helped with my concluding results for my thesis, for which I am very grateful.
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