IISER MOHALI

Note: An e-certificate will be issued to the external participants.

 

Prof. Dr. Jayaraman Sivaguru (Siva) is the Distinguished University Professor and the Antonia and Marshall Wilson Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Bowling Green State University (BGSU), Bowling Green, Ohio. Prof. Sivaguru completed his bachelor’s (1996) and master’s (1998) degrees from St. Joseph’s College, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, and Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Tamil Nadu, India, respectively. He came to the United States in 1998 to pursue his doctoral degree with Prof. V. Ramamurthy at Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA. For his doctoral work, he was recognized by Inter-American Photochemical society with the Closs award in 2003. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2003, he did his postdoctoral studies with Prof. Nicholas J. Turro at Columbia University, NY, USA, from 2003 to 2006. Siva began his independent career as an assistant professor at North Dakota State University (NDSU) in 2006, promoted to an associate professor in 2011 and to a full professor in 2014. His recognitions include 2008 NSF CAREER award, 2010 Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize from the Swiss Chemical Society for outstanding independent research by a young faculty below 40 years in the areas of photochemistry and photobiology, 2011 young-investigator award from the Inter-American Photochemical Society (I-APS), and 2012-young investigator award from Sigma-Xi. At NDSU, Siva was honoured with the 2010 Excellence in Research award and 2011 Excellence in Teaching awards, both from the College of Science and Mathematics, and the 2012 Peltier Award for Innovation in Teaching. He was a visiting young professor for the Global Centre for Excellence at Osaka University, Japan. In Fall 2017, he moved his research program to Bowling Green State University. In 2018 he was a visiting fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under President's International Fellowship Initiative. He serves as the American editor for the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A: Chemistry (from 2013), published by Elsevier. From 2020, he serves as the co-editor-in-chief of Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology. In 2021, Prof. Sivaguru was named Honda-Fujishima Lectureship awardee by the Japanese photochemical association for extremely outstanding achievement in the study of photochemistry. In 2025, was named as the Probst lecture and was honoured at Southern Illinois University. In 2022, he was named as the Distinguished University Professor by BGSU. Currently his research program works on both basic and applied aspects of photochemical sciences. Currently, his research program is investigating (a) Uncovering new excited state chemical reactivity, b) light induced chiral induction in synthetic transformations (c) asymmetric organo-photocatalysis, (d) supramolecular photocatalysis with water-soluble nanocontainers, (e) light responsive materials and initiators, and (f) Designing light-initiated strategies for eye protection and ophthalmic applications (e.g. contact lenses, eyewear, etc.). WWW: https://blogs.bgsu.edu/sivagroup/

 

Dr Arijit K. De completed his BSc (2003) from the University of Calcutta and MSc (2005) from IIT Kanpur. He pursued his PhD with Prof Debabrata Goswami at IIT Kanpur (2005-2010), working on two-photon fluorescence microscopy and optical trapping. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Berkeley (CA, USA) with Graham R. Fleming (2010-2014), where he developed two-dimensional fluorescence-detected coherent spectroscopy (2D-FDCS). In 2014, he joined IISER Mohali (PB, India), where he is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Sciences. The central theme of research in the “Condensed Phase Dynamics” group at IISER Mohali, led by Dr. Arijit K. De, is to explore, through a combination of experiments and theories, a multitude of multidisciplinary problems spanning chemistry, biophysics, and condensed matter physics. The main focus of the group is to investigate energy and charge (electron/hole or proton) transfer dynamics, covering a wide range of timescales (a few tens of femtoseconds to a few nanoseconds), within systems of varying complexities (namely, organic chromophores and their aggregates/multichromophoric systems, transition metal complexes, halide perovskites, and fluorescent proteins), and the effect of the local environment (for example, solvation and nanoscale confinement) on it. To study these problems, the group developed a couple of cutting-edge spectroscopic techniques beyond widely used and commercially available femtosecond pump-probe (or transient absorption) spectroscopy, i.e., ‘two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy’, and ‘(time-resolved) impulsive Raman spectroscopy’, each of which
is the first of its kind developed in India. The group also pioneered in deciphering the role of optical and thermal nonlinearities in laser trapping under femtosecond pulsed excitation. Quite recently, they developed a ‘laser beamshaping (with computer-generated holograms)’ apparatus to study the effect of orbital angular momentum in laser trapping and interactions between active/passive colloidal particles. WWW: https://www.iisermohali.ac.in/faculty/dcs/akde