Arumugam Mahendrasingam

Biography

My first degree (BSc, Honours) in Physics was from University of Sri Lanka (Colombo Campus) in 1976. Subsequently I joined the Physics Department at University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. I came to Keele as a PhD student in 1979 and completed PhD on “X-ray fibre diffraction studies on the polymorphism of DNA and its synthetic analogues” under the supervision of Professor Watson Fuller in 1983. I was appointed as a Research Fellow in 1982 and subsequently appointed as a Lecturer (Physics) in 1989. Later on I was promoted to Senior lecturer (1997) and Reader (2001).

Research and scholarship

The Keele Fibre Diffraction Group has an international reputation for the development and application of X-ray and neutron diffraction techniques in the investigation of molecular structure and organization in a wide range of naturally occurring and synthetic materials. As a member of Fibre Diffraction group, I have made major contribution to the development of time-resolved and microfocus X-ray techniques and to the development of neutron fibre diffraction. We also developed instrumentation for the beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source (USA) and Daresbury SRS to study the deformation of polymer materials.

My research activities in recent years are:

1. application to time and spatially resolved x-ray diffraction techniques to investigate the structure property development in polymeric materials due to elongation flow;
2. developing uniaxial and biaxial deformation techniques to process biodegradable polymers as alternatives to the conventional polymer materials produced from petrochemicals (collaboration with Innovia);
3. the polymorphism associated with cocoa butter which is crucial to the high quality of chocolate confectionery (collaboration with Nestle);
4. the application of time-resolved x-ray diffraction studies of solid state phase transitions in pharmaceutical compounds as a consequence of product processing, response to environmental stress, and the presence of plasticizers( collaboration with University of Minnesota).

Teaching

• Physics and Astrophysics Laboratory Level 4 Semester 1 (Module leader) 
• Physics Laboratory Level 4 Semester 2 (Module leader)
• Physics and Astrophysics Problem Class Level 5 Semester 1
  
  
• PHY-10031 - Instrumentation Physics (Module leader)
• PHY-30007 - Physics Project (Module Leader)
• PHY-30010 - Polymer Physics (Module Leader)