Welcome to Pint of View, Bangalore’s first-ever community where classroom-styled lectures meet drinks in relaxed spaces.

Smoke feels like a familiar thing. Yet a candle, a chulha, a car's tailpipe, a wildfire, and a cigarette all produce chemically distinct hazards hiding under the same word.

Understanding why means looking past familiar metrics like the AQI and into what's actually riding along on these particles. It starts with a simple idea from nanotechnology: a particle's surface, not just its bulk composition, often decides its chemistry, controlling how reactive it is, what sticks to it, and what reactions it starts inside the body. Engineered nanomaterials, from mRNA vaccines to drugs like Doxil and ferumoxytol, deliberately use coatings to evade the immune system or tame a reactive core. Smoke particles carry metals and organic compounds shaped by the same surface chemistry, just with no engineer controlling what sticks to them.

Untangling which chemical combinations actually drive harm is a search problem too large for humans to solve alone. This is where machine learning comes in. Rather than simply making predictions, it can help explain the underlying chemistry. By analysing thousands of real pollution samples, it learns that toxicity depends not just on which ingredients are present, but how they interact, and which combinations become especially harmful.

All of this comes back to the AQI, the single number many of us check every day. Whether it's wildfire smoke or traffic pollution, that number hides what you're actually breathing, and why some people are more vulnerable than others.

About the Speaker

Dr. Aahana Ganguly is a professor at the School of Arts and Sciences in Azim Premji University, Bangalore where she teaches Chemistry. Her current research interests involve studying nanoparticle induced oxidative stress and its role in pulmonary toxicity.

Before joining the university, she was a regulatory scientist in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She worked in the National Center for Toxicological Research developing better regulatory frameworks and methods of evaluating safety and efficacy for cancer nanotherapeutics.

Aahana did her PhD in Chemistry and Materials Science at Princeton University, USA.

Event Details

📅 Wednesday, 12 August

🕛 7 PM – 9 PM

📍 The Bangalore Local, Koramangala [this is a sober venue]

Your ticket includes:

• 1 complimentary kombucha from Local Ferment Co.

• First-come, first-served seating

About Pint of View

Pint of View is India's Largest Lecture Community. We brought the lecture in bar format to India and are now expanding across the globe with chapters in 14 cities worldwide. Here, big ideas meet intimate spaces, and you walk in curious and walk out with a sharper lens on the world.

Book now and develop your own pint of view. 🍻