Sunil Kumar Gupta is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of 
Technology (Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad, India, and is currently finishing his PhD in Environmental Science. His research is focused on traffic microenvironments and associated health impacts for different populations. This research is funded by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. In the years before his PhD degree, Sunil worked at IIT Kanpur and participated in an air pollution study in Himachal Pradesh, and completed several environmental consulting projects. He has also worked on the issue of indoor air quality in mining and non-mining areas. He has a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from V.B.S. Purvanchal University.
Find him on LinkedIn or contact him via e-mail [sunil@ese[dot]ism[dot]ac[dot]in or snlenv@gmail[dot]com.
A short Q&A with Sunil about his work:
What motivated you to study air pollution?
During my Master’s dissertation research, I worked on status of air pollution in ambient and indoor microenvironments near the Renukoot industrial area. Through this project, I learnt the reality about the air pollution in India, and it immediately struck me that we ‘need more research’ in this field.
In India, most researchers are focusing on particulate matter (PM) and gaseous pollutants in ambient air. However, transport microenvironments are highly influential for commuters because vehicles emit large amount of ultrafine particles (UFPs) and gaseous pollutants like CO, VOCs and other hydrocarbons. Through my research, I want to generate data on traffic exposures and increase awareness of the role of transportation in human health hazards.
What kind of resources do you typically need in your research? Are there any challenges for you to perform your research?
According to my knowledge, access to air monitoring instruments is the biggest challenges in India and also in my research, it is hard to get funds for purchase of expensive instruments. Detailed analysis of air pollutants is based on the use of specific analytical instruments but often, they are not available in one place, and this is a significant challenge in India.
We need more collaboration across national and regional research laboratories and scientific organizations, and better linkages with the foreign academic community. Another idea would be to partner with industries which can help to provide more funds.
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