Hyderabad: Prof. Soma Venugopal Rao, faculty in the Advanced Centre of Research in High Energy Materials at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has been nominated and selected as a TOPICAL EDITOR of the prestigious journal Optics Letters of the Optical Society of America. It is also a matter of pride that Prof. Rao is the only Indian in the whole editorial board list of this journal.
He has obtained a B.Sc. (MPC) from Osmania University in 1991, M.Sc. (Physics) from University of Hyderabad in 1994 and Ph.D. (Physics) from University of Hyderabad in 2000.
He worked as a Research Fellow at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, UK during 2000-2003 and as Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore during 2003-2004. He worked as an Assistant Professor at IIT Guwahati during 2004-2007 and joined as a Reader at the University of Hyderabad in 2007. He later became an Associate Professor in 2010 and Professor in 2013.
He has guided 8 Ph. D. students and 8 more are working in his group. He has published 1 book, 10 book chapters, and >300 papers in refereed journals and international conference proceedings, presented >150 papers presented in various international/national conferences. He has delivered >65 invited talks and 1 PLENARY talk.
He has successfully established state-of-the-art ultrafast laser laboratories at ACRHEM, University of Hyderabad. His research interests include detection of explosives using the techniques of SERS, LIBS, CARS etc. and ultrafast laser-matter interaction.
Awards and Honours: Fellow of the Institute of Physics, London, UK (2019); Fellow of the Telangana Academy of Sciences (2017); Recipient of the Chancellor’s award (2016) University of Hyderabad and NASI-SCOPUS award (2012) in Physics category and the Chancellor’s award for the year 2016 from University of Hyderabad.
Elected as SENIOR MEMBER of organizations such as OSA, SPIE, and IEEE. He is now serving as an Associate Editor of the journal RSC Advances. Member of permanent editorial board (Review Editor) for the “Optics and Photonics” section of “Frontiers in Physics” journal.