The study of nuclear processes on the proton-rich side of the nuclear chart plays a crucial role in nuclear astrophysics. Processes such as the rapid proton capture (rp-process) and the p-process occur under extreme conditions, like those found in explosive astrophysical events and require deeper exploration to understand their role in various astrophysical scenarios and in shaping the composition of the universe. Through this presentation, I will talk about 2 different research projects. The first project deals with understanding the process responsible for the synthesis of heaviest known p-nucleus, ¹⁹⁶Hg. The p-nuclei (proton-rich nuclei) are among the rarest of all the known stable nuclei and there are about 35 known of its kind. Synthesis of ¹⁹⁶Hg is studied through the method of activation using (p, 𝛾), (p, n) and (p, 𝛼) reactions in energy range of 4 - 6.93 MeV. A mono-energetic proton beam is incident on a solid mercury sulfide (HgS) target (thickness ~10mg/cm²) made using the method of drop-casting. The second project deals with direct measurement of ²⁶Si(𝛼, p)²⁹P reaction using the Multi-Sampling Ionization Chamber (MUSIC) detector. The dominant (p, 𝛾) nucleosynthesis flow in type -I X-ray ray bursts (XRB) halts at several waiting point nuclei such as ²²Mg, ^24-26Si, ^28-30S and ³⁴Ar due to (p, 𝛾)-( 𝛾, p) equilibrium. It has been suggested that the (𝛼, p) reactions contribute to bypassing the halt in the nucleosynthesis flow at these waiting point nuclei. Motivation and experimental techniques will be discussed for each of these projects. A brief description of implementation of an autonomous system for optimization and delivery of secondary charge particle beam using a subfield of machine learning will also be discussed.