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Chem Comm Publishes Themed Collection on Kaleidoscope Meeting

Chemical Communications is glad to publish a themed collection on Kaleidoscope: A discussion meeting in chemistry.  Guest Edited by Professor G. Naresh Patwari (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay), Professor Jyotishman Dasgupta and Professor Vaibhav Prabhudesai (both from Tata Institute of fundamental Research, Mumbai), this collection highlights the exciting research by the speakers of Kaleidoscope-2023.

Kaleidoscope is an annual gathering of Indian investigators working in various fields of in chemistry and allied areas. Started in 2014, this meeting is a platform for young investigators to discuss, identify and seek suggestions and collaborations among the peer group on contemporary research trends in chemistry and allied areas, particularly biochemistry, chemical biology, and material science. The primary aim of this meeting is to provide a platform for the exchange of new ideas and fresh perspectives among chemists of all different fields of research.

This invitation-only meeting brings young investigators from diverse areas of chemistry together to share their ideas, encouraging productive collaborations in interdisciplinary sciences. Over the years, this meeting became very popular and became an annual affair with different research groups across India took turns to organize and is typically organized in the first weekend of July. The Kaleidoscope-2023 edition of this meeting (July 6–9, 2023), was the 9th in the series  and was organized in the serene confines of YAAN Wellness Retreat, Udaipur.

The meeting consisted of 10-minute presentations followed by 20-minute Q&A session. A post-dinner round-table session was held to discuss various aspects of presentations made during the day which included suggestions, possibility of diversification and collaborations. The unique aspect of the meeting is the absence of preassigned speaking slots and a lottery is used to pick the first slot each speaker at the end of his talk will pick the speaker for the next slot by lottery. Kaleidoscope is a highly interactive and focused meeting where the delegates stay for the entire duration of the meeting and are refrained from using laptops/mobile phones and other communication devices during the course of presentations.

Kaleidoscope-2023 had 36 participants (see photograph), including representatives from Royal Society of Chemistry and American Chemical Society. The list of topics ranged from anti-biotic resistance, biomolecular simulations, dynamics in complex chemical systems, exciton dynamics, intermolecular interactions, photochemistry, sensing in biology, and several others. All the participants of the meeting were invited to contribute to the themed collection.

The Themed Collection can be accessed here:  rsc.li/4cdECA5

Group picture of all the participants in the Kaleidoscope 2024 meeting held at the Yaan Wellness Retreat, Udaipur.

From left to right (Standing): Sajesh Thomas, Ankona Dutta, Vamsee Voora, Sarit Agasti, Jagannath Mondal, Pratap Vishnoi, Nabanita Deb, Amartya Bose, Sanjog Nagarkar, Vishal Govind Rao, Subhabrata Maity, Veerabhadrarao Kaliginedi, Debashree Ghosh, Palas Roy, Suman Chakrabarty, Kalaivanan Nagarajan, Asha Liza James (ACS Representative), Hema Chandra Kotamarthi, Pranav Shirhatti, Amrita Hazra.

From left to right (Sitting): Ravindra Venkatramani, Jayashree Nagesh, Shankar Singh (Event Manager), Sabuj Kundu, Vaibhav Prabhudesai, Anindya Datta, Jyotishman Dasgupta, G. Naresh Patwari, Sameer Sapra, Jayanta Haldar, Sayan Bagchi, Arnab Mukherjee, Chandan Jana, Harinath Chakrapani.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the partial funding provided by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society for enabling us to host the meeting.

Full List of Participants

Name Institute
Amartya Bose Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Amrita Hazra Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune
Anindya Datta Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Ankona Datta, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Aparna Ganguly RSC India, Bengaluru
Arnab Mukherjee Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune
Asha Liza James ACS India, Delhi
Chandan Jana Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Debashree Ghosh Indian Association for Cultivation of Science, Kolkata
Durga Prasad Hari Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
G Naresh Patwari Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Harinath Chakrapani Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune
Hema Chandra  Kotamarthi Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Jagannath Mondal Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad
Jayanta Haldar Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru
Jayashree Nagesh Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bengaluru
Jyotishman Dasgupta Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Kalaivanan Nagarajan Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Nabanita Deb Indian Association for Cultivation of Science, Kolkata
Palas Roy Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar
Pratap Vishnoi Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru
Pranav Shirhatti Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad
Ravindra Venkatramani Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Subhabrata Maiti Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali
Sabuj Kundu Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Sajesh Thomas Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Sameer Sapra Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Sanjog Nagarkar Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Sarit Agasti Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru
Sayan Bagchi CSIR – National Chemical Laboratory, Pune
Suman Chakrabarty S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata
Vaibhav Prabhudesai Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Vamsee Voora Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
Veerabhadrarao Kaliginedi Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
Vishal Govind Rao Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Vivek Tiwari Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

 

 

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Josep Cornella: Winner of the ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship 2022/23!

On behalf of the ChemComm Editorial Board, we are pleased to announce the winner of the 2022/23 ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship – Josep Cornella! Our warmest congratulations to Josep!
 
Josep Cornella join recent past winners  Keary Engle (2021), Thomas Bennett (2021) and Bill Morandi (2020). Learn more about Josep below.

Josep Cornella (Pep) is a Max Planck Group Leader in the Department of Organometallic Chemistry at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany. He received  his PhD in 2012 from Queen Mary University of London, where he worked with  Prof. Igor Larrosa on the use of aromatic carboxylic acids as aryl donors in metal-catalyzed decarboxylative reactions. He then moved back to Catalunya as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Ruben Martin (ICIQ) and further received a Beatriu de Pinós Fellowship in 2015 to carry out further postdoctoral studies in the group of Prof. Phil S. Baran at The Scripps Research Institute, California, USA.

He joined Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in spring 2017 and in summer of the same year, he obtained a Max Planck Research Group Leader (MPRGL) position in the same Institute to create and lead the Sustainable Catalysis Laboratory. His research group interests span from the invention of new catalytic transformations to the design of novel catalysts to uncover previously unknown pathways. You can learn more about Josep’s group and his research on Twitter @CornellaLab

As part of the Lectureship award, Josep will be presenting lectures over the coming 12 months. Details of the lectures will be announced in due course but keep an eye on Twitter @ChemCommun for details!

 

Highly Commended Nominations

Each year, a large number of excellent researchers gets nominated for the ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship award. Due to the extremely high standard of nominations this year, we have decided to select a number of Highly Commended candidates, who the Editorial Board highlighted as performing exceptional science and deserving of recognition in the community.

 

 

Shoubhik Das received his PhD from the group of Prof. Matthias Beller in the Leibniz Institute of Catalysis (LIKAT), Germany. After finishing his PhD, he joined the group of Prof. Matthew Gaunt at the University of Cambridge for postdoctoral fellowship’ followed by working with Prof. Paul Dyson in EPFL, Switzerland. In August 2015 he received the ‘Liebig Fellowship’ to start his independent research career at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Followed by this, he accepted the Assistant Professor position in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Antwerp, Belgium in November 2019. In August 2023, he will be joining as the full professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Follow Shoubhik’s research on Twitter @shoubhikdas4

 

 

 

Ellen Matson obtained her PhD from Purdue University under the supervision of Prof. Suzanne C. Bart studying the synthesis of low-valent uranium alkyl complexes. Subsequently, Ellen performed postdoctoral research with Prof. Alison R. Fout at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.  Ellen began her independent career at the University of Rochester in 2015; the Matson Laboratory studies the synthesis and reactivity of metal chalcogenide clusters as model systems for surfaces and redox active metalloligands. Ellen has received multiple awards recognizing her research accomplishments as an independent investigator; these include a Sloan Research Fellowship (2019), a Cottrell Award (2019), and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2020). Most recently, Ellen was named the Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry (2022).

Follow Ellen’s research on Twitter @MatsonLab

 

 

 

Sophie Rousseaux obtained her PhD from University of Ottawa working with Prof. Keith Fagnou on Pd-catalyzed aliphatic C–H bond functionalization reactions. In 2010, she moved to MIT to complete her graduate research with Prof. Stephen L. Buchwald. She was a NSERC postdoctoral fellow and Glasstone Research Fellow at University of Oxford from 2012–2015, where she worked with Prof. Harry L. Anderson. Sophie joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto in 2015 where she currently is an Associate Professor and also holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Organic Chemistry since 2016. Her group’s research interests include organic synthesis, catalysis, and organometallic chemistry, with a particular focus on the synthesis of small rings and nitrile-containing molecules. Her group’s work has been recognized by several awards including the CSC Keith Fagnou Award (2023), the McLean Research Fellowship (2022), the Organic Letters Outstanding Publication of the Year Lectureship (2022), a Sloan Research Fellowship (2021), an Ontario Early Researcher Award (2021), and the Dorothy Shoichet Women Faculty Science Award of Excellence (2020).

Follow Sophie’s research at @RousseauxGroup or her department’s Twitter handle @chemuoft

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