Laboratory of Atmospheric and Interstellar Chemistry

Mausumi was born and brought up in Assam. Although she was always interested in Science and had a vague vision that one day she would undertake research activity in Science, her vision turned into a goal during her Master's in Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati which led to her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Department of Inorganic and Physical chemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore with Prof. Arunan. Her thesis work is based on the microwave spectroscopic studies of structure and dynamics of weakly bound hydrogen bonded complexes of water and hydrogen sulfide with aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons using a home-built Pulsed Nozzle Fourier Transform Microwave Spectrometer. After completing her PhD, she moved to the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), USA for her first postdoctoral work, where she worked with Prof. Ralf Kaiser on the reaction dynamics of bimolecular reactions relevant to combustion and insterstellar process using crossed-beam scattering technique. After a year of stay at UHM, she moved to the University of Virginia as a postdoctoral research associate, where she worked on developing and building a new Helium Droplet Isolation instrument for studying ions inside Helium Nanodroplets.  Her current research interest spans from understanding the chemical mechanism in the atmosphere to the molecular mechanism of aerosol formation to understanding the mechanistic aspects of the mode of action of anti-cancer drugs.