Obituary
Prof. Asit Ray, Aerosol Scientist, passed away Tuesday, November 11, 2014, after a battle with lung cancer. He was the William Bryan Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky. Prof. Ray received a B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, followed by a Ph.D. from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. in 1980. He spent his career at the University of Kentucky, during which he made significant contributions to the study of mass ejection during charged droplet breakup and to the use of particle levitation techniques for the study of aerosol behaviour. He effectively measured resonances of light scattered from levitated droplets to get fundamental information on evaporating droplets, such as activity coefficients of multi-component mixtures.
Prof. Ray had spent a sabbatical at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He also participated in the 2005 Workshop on Nanoparticle Aerosol Science and Technology and IV Asian Aerosol Conference, held in Mumbai. Prof. Ray was a highly creative and rigorous researcher and has inspired generations of undergraduate and graduate students, through his commitment to scientific and engineering excellence. He is survived by his wife, Sharmishta, son, Rohit and daughter, Neha.