Australian Research Council APD Fellow & RMIT Tenure Track Fellow
RMIT University
Functional Nanomaterials, Drug-delivery, Bio-imaging, Bio-sensing , Bio-catalysis
PhD (Nanobiotechnology), MSc (Biotechnology), BSc (Plant Sciences)
Vipul obtained his doctorate in 2007 from National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune, India in the field of Nanobiotechnology. During his PhD, he investigated the “Biological synthesis routes for oxide nanoparticles and composite materials” under the supervision of Dr. Murali Sastry.
Thereafter, in 2007, he joined Prof. Frank Caruso’s Group at University of Melbourne as a Research Fellow, where he investigated “Biocompatible polymer nanocapsules for drug-delivery and cancer therapy applications”.
In early 2008, he moved to RMIT University as a Tenure Track Fellow to undertake more responsibilities and was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant with APD Fellowship to work on “Biomimetic synthesis of multiple non-metals codoped titania nanoparticles for visible-light photocatalysis”.
Vipul currently has 39 referred publications to his credit, which include one US Patent, and 22 highly reputed journal articles. He is currently supervising 7 PhD and 2 Honours students at RMIT University, Australia.
Vipul’s research current research interests focus around synthesis of advanced multifunctional nanomaterials with applications in (Bio)catalysis, (Bio)sensing, and Biomedicine. He is exploring galvanic replacement based electrochemical approaches for the synthesis of multi-metallic nanoporous materials with multiple applications.
Another aspect of his research focus on biomimetic chemistry and understanding of biochemical mechanism involved in the synthesis of nanomaterials in natural habitats by various organisms. Bansal’s Group explore the multifunctional nanomaterials synthesized in his laboratory for various applications including multifunctional nanocapsules for cancer therapy and MRI imaging, antigen nanocapsules for vaccine delivery, nanomaterials for antimicrobial applications, nanostructured surfaces for stem cells differentiation, and nanoporous multi-metallic systems for catalysis, (bio)sensing and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) applications.
S. Sivakumar, V. Bansal, C. Cortez, S.-F. Chong, A.N. Zelikin, F. Caruso. Degradable, surfactant-free, monodisperse polymer-encapsulated emulsions as anticancer drug carriers. Advanced Materials, 2009, 21, 1-5.
P.D. Sawant, Y.M. Sabri, S.J. Ippolito, V. Bansal, S.K. Bhargava. In-depth nano-scale complex interaction of Hg with gold nanostructures using AFM-based power spectrum density method. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2009, 11, 2374-2378. (Cover Page Article)
Y. Wang, V. Bansal, A.N. Zelikin, F. Caruso. Templated synthesis of single-component polymer capsules and their application in drug-delivery. Nano Letters, 2008, 8, 1741-1745.
V. Bansal, H. Jani, J.Du Plessis, P. Coloe, S.K. Bhargava. Galvanic replacement reaction on metal films: a one-step approach to create nanoporous surfaces for catalysis. Advanced Materials, 2008, 20, 717-723.
V. Bansal, P. Poddar, A. Ahmad, M. Sastry. Room-temperature biosynthesis of ferroelectric barium titanate nanoparticles. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2006, 128, 11958-11963.