ChemSci 2024 Symposium @ IISER Bhopal

Bharathwaj received his bachelor’s in science (Chemistry) from the University of Madras (RKM Vivekananda College, Chennai) in 2005 graduating with a gold medal. He pursued his master’s in science (Chemistry) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras in 2007. Bharathwaj carried out his doctoral research thesis under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Szyperski (State University of New York at Buffalo, 2007-13) and continued his postdoctoral research with Prof. Hashim M. Al-Hashimi (University of Michigan and Duke University, 2013-15). Bharathwaj established his independent lab in Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal as an Assistant Professor (2015) and is presently an Associate Professor (2023).

Lin Chen received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After her postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley, she joined Argonne as a staff scientist. In 2007, she joined Northwestern University where her research is focused on fundamental light-matter interactions of different solar energy conversion platforms, including excited state molecular structural dynamics in photocatalytic processes and photovoltaic materials; understanding roles of ultrafast and coherent electronic and atomic motions in in photochemical reactions, and functional structural dynamics of biomacromolecules on multiple spatial and temporal scales. Her main tools for research are ultrafast laser and X-ray spectroscopy/scattering and other property/structural methods in collaborations with theorists and chemists making molecules and materials.

Professor Malika Jeffries-EL received BA degrees in Chemistry and Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She earned her master’s and Ph.D. degrees in organic chemistry from The George Washington University. After spending one year at Smith College as a Mendenhall Fellow she then worked as a post-doctoral researcher under the direction of Professor Richard D. McCullough at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2005, she joined the faculty in the Chemistry Department at Iowa State University and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2012. She joined the Department of Chemistry and Division of Materials Science at Boston University in 2016. Her research interest includes Organic light emitting diodes (OLED)s, Organic Solar Cells (OSC)s and Organic Field Effect Transistors (OFET)s.

Dr. Sachin Dev Verma is an Assistant Professor at IISER Bhopal, where he has been contributing to the academic and research community since 2019. Dr. Verma has made significant contributions to the fields of physical chemistry and measurement science through his research on nanostructures development, time-resolved spectroscopy, microscopy, and fluctuation correlation spectroscopy. His group has found a way to engineer perovskites-based nanomaterials with high carrier temperatures preserving its dynamics. His group has developed an advanced technique to analyse relaxation rate-dispersion, two-dimensional fluctuation correlation spectroscopy (2D-FlucCS), that focuses on differentiating heterogeneous and homogeneous systems using 2D correlation analysis. 2D-FlucCS draws clear picture of the origin of nonexponential kinetics observed in condensed phase. Recently, his group has developed interferometric scattering (iSCAT) microscopy to understand the early-stage dynamics, and intermediate steps involved in nanostructure growth.

May Copsey is currently the Executive Editor for Royal Society of Chemistry’s flagship journal, Chemical Science. She joined the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2006 as an Assistant Editor and has worked on a variety of different journals during this time, including Dalton Transactions, CrystEngComm and Journal of Materials Chemistry. She was Executive Editor for the Analytical portfolio of journals for four years, before moving to take over the General Chemistry portfolio, including Chemical Science, ChemComm and Chemical Society Reviews in 2015. She has had the pleasure of leading the formation of a new team dedicated to Chemical Science since June of 2018. May is a main group chemist at heart, as before joining the RSC she worked for three years as Post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of Calgary, after completing a PhD in main group chemistry at the University of Bristol.

Dr Aparna Ganguly completed her graduation and post- graduation in Chemistry from University of Delhi and subsequently obtained her PhD in Materials Chemistry under the supervision of Professor A. K. Ganguli at IIT Delhi. After a short stint at teaching Physical Chemistry at Central University of Rajasthan, she moved back to the Nanoscale Research Facility, IIT Delhi as a scientist where she worked extensively on porous materials and their applications. In 2014, she joined the Royal Society of Chemistry where she is currently the Editorial Development Manager and manages the journal portfolio and their growth in India.  As a part of her role, she works quite extensively with the scientific community, various Indian chemical societies, and researchers across various disciplines of Chemical Sciences and support the journal teams.