"Extensive molecular dynamics simulations have been employed to probe the effects of salts on the kinetics and dynamics of early-stage aggregated structures of steric zipper peptides in water. The simulations reveal that the valency of salts play a crucial role in initiating the aggergation of the peptides: monovalent salts have higher tendency to induce aggregation of the peptides compared to the divalent salts. Interestingly the aggregate conformation also depends on the valency of the counterion and a tendency of formation of beta sheet is seen to be higher for the divalent salt systems. The monovalent salts induce large globular aggregated structures whereas the divalent salts result in smaller aggregated structures with tendency towards more regular structures like beta sheet formation. These simulations underscore the importance of valency of salts in biologically relevant aggregated structures."

"Thesis defence"

"The advent of Ion Beam facilities and subsequent explosive growth in the studies of neutron rich nuclei near the drip line have opened up new vistas in modern nuclear physics. The discovery of halo structures, both 1-neutron and 2-neutron halos, in neutron-rich, light nuclei has been a significant development in nuclear structure studies. The 2-neutron halo nuclei can have both Borromean or non-Borromean properties and can be ideally modeled as three-body systems. A variety of theoretical techniques have been applied over the years to investigate the structural properties of 2-neutron halo nuclei. Of all these techniques, three-body approaches appear to be very successful and effective. In this talk we will summarise our efforts, over the years, to calculate different structural properties of 2-n halo nuclei, like, 11Li, 14Be, 20C etc. We will also talk about our search for the elusive Efimov effect in such nuclei. We will show the possible presence of Efimov states in certain non-Borromean 2n halo nuclei, their evolution to resonances with increasing neutron-core ( 2-body) interaction and emergence as an asymmetric Fano resonance."

"TBA"