India Roadshow

Becky Monfort is the Program Manager for ACS on Campus, the American Chemical Society’s flagship outreach program. She oversees events and programs at institutions around the world, bringing leaders in chemistry, publishing, research, science communication, and career development to thousands of students and early career researchers. Prior to joining the ACS on Campus team, Becky managed the ACS international student chapter program, coordinated ACS outreach efforts to international students and faculty in the chemical sciences, and facilitated student programming at ACS and other scientific meetings. Becky joined ACS in July 2017 from Organic Letters, an ACS Publication, at the University of Pennsylvania, and she has worked in global program strategy and development. Becky holds a BA in French and Comparative Literature from Bryn Mawr College.

Sara E. Skrabalak is a Provost-appointed James H. Rudy Professor at Indiana University – Bloomington. She has appointments in the Departments of Chemistry and Intelligent Systems Engineering. She received her B.A. degree in Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Washington in Seattle from 2007-2008 and began on the faculty at Indiana University – Bloomington in 2008. Prior to assuming the role of Editor-in-Chief for Chemistry of Materials and ACS Materials Letters, she served as an Associate Editor for Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances, both from the Royal Society of Chemistry. She, with her students, has published over a hundred papers in peer reviewed journals and one book. Her research interests span a broad number of topics, with a focus on solid-state chemistry and nanomaterials, with strong influences from chemical engineering. Her group is largely known for providing hypothesis-driven approaches for the synthesis of new materials with defined crystal shape and architecture for applications in energy science, catalysis, separations, plasmonics, chemical sensing, and secured electronics.

Rajesh is responsible for developing and managing ACS’ strategic objectives and activities to engage and develop the chemical sciences community across different regions – Asia Pacific, South Asia, Middle-East, Africa and Latin America regions. It includes working with the chemistry community, professional societies, policy makers and industry to advance chemical sciences. Earlier, Rajesh was Head of Public Policy, Government Affairs and Engagement, India and South Asia at the UK-based Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). He has also worked as a Senior Science and Innovation Advisor at the British High Commission in India to support UK-India research collaborations. Rajesh was a technology and business journalist for The Week – a national magazine, and Deccan Herald – a leading newspaper in Bangalore. He is recipient of Rolls Royce-Chevening Research, Science and Innovation Leadership Fellowship in 2018 at University of Oxford.

Mr. Milind Wagh holds a Masters in Drug Chemistry from Pune University. He has 7 years of research experience in several Pharmaceutical and Chemical companies. He has been working for ACS International for Chemical Abstracts for 6 years and is well conversant with solutions and products of CAS including the flagship product – SciFinder. He spends his spare time in photography and traveling.

Kritika Khulbe is the Publication Data Manager at the Publishing Integrity Office in ACS Publications division. She oversees data analysis support during the peer-review process, managing the day-to-day operations of the data analyst teams including training and monitoring of vendor staff that perform data analysis checks for ACS journals, responding to editor, reviewer and author queries about data-reporting requirements, to ensure the data is accessible. She is also responsible for responding to inquiries received through the ACS Research Data email or escalating any data related questions. Kritika joined ACS in March 2022 and is based in the ACS India, Delhi Office. Prior to joining ACS, she had experience working with the scientific community as a research scientist in both industrial and academic organizations. In her most recent experience, she performed characterization/analysis of raw materials and their finished products. She received PhD in chemistry from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Prof. Prasad obtained his PhD in asymmetric catalysis from University of Pune for the work carried out at NCL, Pune. He held post-doctoral positions as a AvH fellow at the University of Muenster, Germany and at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. After a brief stint as scientist in medicinal chemistry at Praecis Pharmaceuticals (presently Glaxo Smith Kline), Waltham, USA, he joined the faculty at the Department of Organic Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore in November 2003 where currently he is a Professor. Professor Prasad’s research interests are centered around developing strategies for the total synthesis of natural products of medicinal importance and their evaluation. Prof. Prasad is a recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Chemical Sciences of CSIR, Swarnajayanti Fellowship of Department of Science and Technology and is an elected fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.

Dr. Dipti Gupta is working as a Professor at Metallurgical Engineering and Material Science (MEMS) department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), India. She received her B-Tech from IIT Kanpur and continued her M-Tech and Ph.D. degree in Materials and Metallurgical Engineering in the same institute. Later she worked as a BK-21 Postdoctoral Fellow at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea and as an EPSRC Research Associate at Imperial College, London, U.K.. She also spent two years with Department of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University, Korea as BK Assistant Professor. Her research interests are in the area of Flexible and Stretchable electronics, Wearable sensors for application in healthcare and energy applications.   She is recipient of prestigious SERB Power Fellowship and also serves as Associate Editor of ACS Applied Electronic Materials. Currently, she is associated with Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) on IOT/IOE where she would be contributing towards Health-IOT, Sensors and Data Analysis. She is also associated with Center of Excellence in Nano electronics (CEN), IITB-Monash Research Academy (an initiative of IITB and Monash University), Wadhwani Research Center for Bioengineering (WRCB), National Center for Photovoltaic Research and Education (NCPRE), located at IIT Bombay, India. Her research activities are funded by competitive programs of Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, The Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), Scientific and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Wadhwani foundation, Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Tata Center for Technology and Design (TCTD) etc.

Kanishka Biswas obtained his Ph.D. (2009) degree (Advisor- Prof. C.N.R Rao) from the Solid State & Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and did postdoctoral research (Advisor-Prof. Mercouri G. Kanatzidis) (2009–2012) in Northwestern University, USA. Currently, he is a full Professor in the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore. He is pursuing research in solid state chemistry, thermoelectric energy conversion, topological quantum materials and perovskite halides. He is an elected Fellow of Indian Academy Sciences from 2022 and he is an invited Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), London, UK in 2021. He has received the Khosla Nation Award in Science, IIT Roorkee (2022); Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Chemistry from Government of India in 2021, Materials Science Annual Prize by Materials Research Society of India (MRSI) (2020), Swarna-Jayanti Fellowship from DST, Government of India (2019); Bronze Medal from Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) (2019); Wiley Young Scientist Award from IUMRS-ICAM, Japan (2017), MRS Singapore Young Researcher Merit Awards (2016) and Young Affiliate of The Word Academy of Sciences (TWAS) (2015). He is serving as an Executive Editor of ACS Applied Energy Materials, ACS. He is serving as advisory board member of various international journals including Inorganic Chemistry (ACS), Journal of Solid-State Chemistry (Elsevier), Journal of Materials Chemistry A (RSC), Materials Horizon (RSC) etc.

Thara is currently an Associate Professor and Head, Department of Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, India. Her research interests includes design and development of new materials with focus on energy conversion/storage and biosensing applications, in-depth fundamental analysis of the newly designed electrocatalysts by various electrochemical, spectroscopic, microscopic and scanning probe techniques. She is a recipient of several prestigious fellowships like Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship, Germany and Ramanujan Fellowship by Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India. She is a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry admitted through “Leaders in the field” scheme and also an elected Fellow of Indian Chemical Society. She is a recipient of CRSI-Bronze Medal 2023 from the Chemical Research Society of India and Silver Medal of CRS 2023 from the Society Chirantan Rasayan Sanstha, ECSI National Metrohm Award 2023 from Electrochemical Society of India and A.V. Rama Rao prize for women 2024 from Chemical Research Society of India. She is an Associate Editor of Chemistry of Materials (ACS), an Editorial Board Member of Electrocatalysis (Springer Nature) and Sustainable Energy and Fuels (Royal Society of Chemistry).

Dr. Raghavan B. Sunoj, is par-excellent Chemistry Professor at IIT Bombay. He is very instrumental in inspiring and motivating the young generation with the excitement of learning and to take up science as a career option. He has been a resource person in several outreach programs such as the ‘teach ten thousand college teachers’ a national-level program. He has actively contributed in taking college level organic chemistry through a problem solving approach to rural India. He has been an active member of summer school programs in theoretical chemistry and organic chemistry. Sunoj has been a recipient of various awards including Prof. S. P. Sukhatme Excellence in Teaching Award, IIT Bombay, 2017 and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize for chemical science in 2019. His students consider him to be one of the best teachers of IIT Bombay.