IIT Madras to mentor Nagaland scholar selected for int’l fellowship in battery research

CHENNAI: In a significant boost to India’s clean energy innovation ecosystem, IIT Madras’s Energy Consortium will mentor Dipankar Hazarika, a PhD scholar from Nagaland University, who has been awarded the esteemed Energy Innovation Fellowship Grant by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi.

As part of the fellowship, IIT-M will provide expert guidance on technology readiness, product development, and real-world deployment — supporting Hazarika’s research on advanced battery storage solutions.

Hazarika, working under the supervision of Assistant Prof Nurul Alam Choudhury, chemistry department, has developed a lab-scale prototype of an all-solid-state super-capacitor using biopolymer-based hydrogel electrolytes. His innovation boasts electrochemical performance, including a cycle life of 51,500 cycles, high-rate capability, and excellent areal capacitance. The invention has already been granted an Indian patent.

His findings were recently published in the high-impact Journal of Power Sources (Impact Factor 8.1) under the title ‘An ionically cross-linked chitosan hydrogel membrane electrolyte for long-lived electrical double layer capacitors’. “This fellowship will help transform my research into scalable solutions for clean energy storage,” said Hazarika, who is based at the Laboratory for Polymer Materials and Renewable Energy at Nagaland University.

Out of more than 100 proposals nationwide, only 13 were selected, with Hazarika being one of just two from the North East. The initiative is supported by Innovation Norway, NITI Aayog, TERI, and Atal Incubation Centers, with AIC-SMUTBI acting as the regional host.

Congratulating the scholar, Nagaland University Vice-Chancellor Prof Jagadish K Patnaik said, “This honour reflects the growing research calibre of our institution and will inspire future scientists from the region.”