Diwakar Shukla
- Westwater Professorial Scholar
- Professor
(217) 300-0021
203 Roger Adams Laboratory
Uses and develops computational and experimental methods to understand biophysical processes for applications in plant biology and human diseases.
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Biography
Diwakar Shukla is a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also an affiliate faculty in the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative biology, Department of Plant Biology, Bioengineering and Chemistry. His research work is focused on understanding the complex molecular processes in chemical and biomolecular systems using computational and experimental techniques. He started his research career at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India, where he received B. Tech and M. Tech. degrees in chemical engineering. He then joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering. Before joining Illinois, he was postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Prof. Vijay S. Pande, Department of Chemistry at Stanford University. Diwakar has received early-career faculty awards from the American Chemical Society, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. At Illinois, Shukla has been recognized for his research and teaching: he has been awarded the Dean's Award for excellence in research (2020, 2024); Stanley H. Pierce Award for excellence in mentoring (2024); Engineering Council Outstanding Advising Award (2016, 2024) and the Teaching Excellence Award from the School of Chemical Sciences (2019).
Education
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemistry, Stanford University, 2011-2014
- Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006-2011
- M.S., Chemical Engineering Practice, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009
- B.Tech., Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, 2006
Research Interests
- Molecular Engineering; Molecular Modeling and Simulations; Biophysics
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Selected Articles in Journals
- B. Selvam, Z. Shamsi and D. Shukla. Universality of Sodium Ion Binding Mechanism in G-Protein-Coupled Receptors. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 57, 12, 3048-3053, 2018.
- Balaji Selvam, Shriyaa Mittal and Diwakar Shukla. Free energy landscape of the complete transport cycle in a key bacterial transporter. ACS Central Science, Vol. 4, 9, 1146–1154, 2018.
Honors
- Engineering Council Outstanding Advising Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2015, 2024)
- List of Excellent Teachers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2016-2024)
- New Innovator Award in Food & Agriculture Research, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (2017)
- NSF Early Career Award, National Science Foundation (2018)
- Sloan Research Fellowship, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2019)
- Dean's Award for Excellence in Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2020, 2024)
- Pivot Fellowship, Simons Foundation (2022)
Teaching Honors
- Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award (2010)