RSC Publishing Blog

The Royal Society of Chemistry is celebrating the 60th birthday of Anthony Czarnik and the 65th birthday of AP de Silva with an online collection on ‘Chemosensors and Molecular Logic’, published across several of our journals. This themed web collection highlights the current state of the art and future directions in these two closely linked fields.

With the launch of this issue, we decided it’s time to get to know Professors Czarnik and de Silva better! Read our interviews below where we ask them about their research, hobbies and what drives them.

Tony Czarnik began his research career in 1983 at Ohio State University, where he worked for ten years. He then worked as Director of Chemistry at Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research, Sr. Director at IRORI Quantum Microchemistry, CSO at Illumina, and CSO at Senseonics. In 2003, he founded Protia, LLC – spin-offs include Deuteria Pharmaceuticals (sold in 2012), Deuteria Beverages, Deuteria Agrochemicals, and Deuteria Biomaterials. In 2012, Dr. Czarnik co-founded DeuteRx, LLC with Dr. Sheila DeWitt. Today, his sole executive position is that of Manager, Deuteria Beverages, LLC.

Dr. Czarnik’s research interests have included fluorescent chemosensors, combinatorial chemistry, RNA-targeted small molecule drugs, DNA sequencing using self-assembled microarrays, and improving chemical products using deuterium enrichment. The unifying focus of his work has been creating new ways in which chemists can be useful.

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What do you enjoy about research and what do you dislike? My organic chemistry lab courses drew me into Chemistry. I loved the smells- even the nasty ones. I loved having squeaky clean glassware, and having just the right wrist action to put a solvent bottle’s cap on with one adept motion. I was transfixed by the notion that distillation and crystallization could be used to turn horrible black messes into colorless, pure liquids and solids. I still don’t understand why crystallization works on such wildly different classes of compounds.

What is the greatest challenge you face in your research? Waiting. For everything.

Many important discoveries are initially unexpected. Has it ever happened to you? Yes, in fact in the fluorescent chemosensors area. A student made a ZnCl2 complex of an anthracene diamine and prepared a solution of it for NMR. For no good reason, I shined a UV lamp on the NMR tube. It glowed bright blue. We then set upon a path to understand why.

What is the achievement you are most proud of in your academic career? Total synthesis of my daughter. (I put it in my lab notebook- “My best work to date.”)

What is your hobby? Is there any relationship between hobby and research life? I play piano. In 2010, I earned my Master of Music degree in Composition. At some point during my studies, it hit me that the piano keyboard was actually a periodic table… just with the rows laid end to end. It actually looks like the Periodic Table of the Elements when laid out as on an organ. That was a cool flash of insight.

How to balance the work and your life, and how is your family life? I never learned to do it well. My family has forgiven me time and time again, and so today I am still part of a family.

Who do you think is very important when you chose chemistry as your career? My seventh grade science teacher, Mrs. Anne Graham. She told me that I would become a chemist, and then went on to encourage my interest. She and her husband, a student in Paper Chemistry, gave my family a tour of what was the ‘Institute of Paper Chemistry’ in Appleton, Wisconsin where I grew up. Mrs. Graham set me on a course, and I never waivered from it. That was lucky for me. I still think of Mrs. Graham often.

Do you have any tips for doing successful scientific research? Donald Cram, 1987 Chemistry Nobelist, was also a surfer. He once told me that success in Chemistry was similar to success in surfing. ‘Look out in the distance and learn how to predict which wave will break at the right time for you to ride it.’ Having that skill greatly increases one’s chance to work on a topic deemed to be ‘important’.

If you were not a chemist, which career would you choose? With perfect hindsight, I would like to have been a documentary filmmaker in the ‘Ken Burns’ style.

Prof. de Silva was born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka where he completed his undergraduate studies at the university. He moved to Belfast to enjoy PhD and post-doctoral studies at Queen’s University. He then returned to the University of Colombo for family reasons, before continuing his teaching and research career at Queen’s University. AP de Silva has been a visiting professor at various universities, including the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Chulalongkorn University and East China University of Science & Technology. He received the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Sensor Award in 2008 and the Inaugural International Award for Molecular Sensors and Molecular Logic Gates in 2012. He has also written a book ‘Molecular Logic-based Computation’ published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2013.

Prof. de Silva’s research interests include supramolecular photochemistry, which led him and co-workers to connect supramolecular/coordination interactions, fluorescence and photoinduced electron transfer (PET) in the mid-1980s. With his co-workers, he generalized fluorescent PET sensor/switch behaviour into a predictive design tool for measuring target concentrations. AP de Silva consulted with Roche Diagnostics when the OPTI blood gas and electrolyte analyzer was designed and built, which is now sold by Optimedical (optimedical.com) and Idexx Laboratories (idexx.com). Extension of the ‘fluorophore-spacer-receptor’ system led him and co-workers to invent the experimental field of molecular logic-based computation. Now we understand that sensors are the simplest examples of molecular logic devices. Over 550 laboratories worldwide have contributed to this field so far, by showing that the concepts and processes of computer science can be transplanted into molecules and chemical interactions/reactions.

What excites you most about the field of Molecular Logic? Excitement never lasts too long and is associated with the emotion-driven parts of our lives. While science is very enjoyable, it usually arises from our rational faculties, develops slowly and leaves lasting impressions. I find the field of molecular information-handling enjoyable because it is a natural progression from the human version, except on a far-smaller size-scale.

What is the greatest challenge you face in your research? The unknown. But then, isn’t that what draws some of us to research?

Many important discoveries are initially unexpected. Has it ever happened to you? The meaning of ‘initial’ and ‘expectation’ changes with time and person. I didn’t understand expectation at birth. I didn’t expect molecular logic until I had ruminated on what a physicist friend, Satish Namasivayam, had taught me about elements of digital electronics. The limits of computation experts at IBM didn’t expect molecular logic to be worthwhile even after its announcement and even though our brains are molecule-based. Thankfully, over 550 laboratories have contributed to the field since then upto now. Serendipity has never been too far from anything worthwhile that I’ve done.

How to balance the work and your life? I am grateful that the work required in research does not have to be mind-numbingly hard and continuous. Since research benefits greatly from reflective periods (including periods where the brain spools away on problem-solving unknown to us), considerable time is freed up for us to get on with our general lives.

What is your hobby? Is there any relationship between hobby and research life? I have been fortunate to play in an Irish traditional music band for nearly 20 years now. When musicians who read each other play in a circle, with the music bouncing around inside, there are moments of brilliant intensity which are truly exciting.

What are your suggestions to young generations to encourage them to consider a career in science? There are many aspects of life where truths have to be taken on trust, where truths depend on those in powerful positions or where truths have little meaning. All these situations are less than satisfactory. I like science because truths tend to get established by the cumulative critical efforts of many contributors. Even the subsequent modification of those truths occurs in a similarly considered way. There may be those in younger generations who wish for similarly dependable truths. Then they are scientists-in-the-making.

How do you define ‘a successful scientist’ and how to achieve it? For me, a successful person is someone who contributes to the success of others. Several old philosophies have discussed this view at length. Then, a scientist can be successful by contributing to how other scientists think, how other non-scientists think and how other people live (in that order).

Do you have any tips for doing successful scientific research? Learning bits about as many things as possible helped me to attempt bridging of disciplines.

Read the collection and stay up-to-date with new additions here.

The 6th International Conference on Molecular Sensors and Molecular Logic Gates (MSMLG 2018) will be held at Dalian University of Technology from 3-6 June 2018. At the meeting two of the Guest Editors of this themed issue, Engin Akkaya (Bilkent University) and Tony D. James (University of Bath), will receive MSMLG Czarnik Awards. In addition Youjun Yang (ECUST), Zhaochao Xu (Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics), Alexander Schiller (Friedrich Schiller University Jena) and David Margulies (Weizmann Institute) will receive MSMLG Czarnik Emerging Investigator Awards. For more details and registration details please see the conference web site (http://msmlg2018.dlut.edu.cn/).

*Reprinted with permission from Fluorescent Chemosensors for Ion and Molecule Recognition, Czarnik, A.W., Ed.; ACS Symposium Series 538; American Chemical Society: Washington, D.C., 1993; cover image. Copyright 1993 American Chemical Society.

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2016, and this year marks the 150th anniversary of the German Chemical Society (GDCh). Thus, the RSC and the GDCh are not only among the oldest but also among the largest and most active chemical societies worldwide. When outlining plans to launch the German Chemical Society in 1867, August Wilhelm von Hofmann drew on his positive experiences at the Chemical Society in London in how such a society can stimulate its members and provide a driving force for research. A RSC–GDCh Joint Symposium is taking place on October 25, 2017 in London. Find out more.

There have been many close collaborations between researchers from both countries. Numerous researchers have spent time in the top laboratories in the other country forging bonds and building networks. Chemists from the UK have won some of the most prestigious awards bestowed by the GDCh, and similarly German researchers have won some of the top RSC prizes.

To commemorate the respective anniversaries the RSC and the GDCh and its publisher Wiley-VCH are making 150 articles freely available till the end of 2017. The selection provides some historical insights, a number of papers from prize-winning researchers, and a wide range of collaborative works across the years.

 Read the collection now.

Dr Jyotishman Dasgupta received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2000.  He carried out his Masters thesis under the guidance of Prof. Amit Basak in the chemistry department. Subsequently he moved to Princeton University as a Hughes Stott Taylor graduate fellow where he carried out his Ph.D. work in the field of oxygenic photosynthesis under the supervision of Prof. Charles Dismukes. In 2006, he moved to UC Berkeley where he did his postdoctoral work with Prof. Richard A. Mathies. During his stay at Berkeley, he used femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy to study light-triggered conformation changes in photoactive proteins. After coming back to India in 2010, he set up his independent research group as an Assistant Professor (Reader) at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. The central theme of his reserach group is to probe dynamical structural events leading upto charge generation in molecular materials, in order to fabricate bio-inspired devices for solar electricity generation and organic photocatalysis in water.

Kanishka Biswas obtained his MS and Ph.D degree from the Solid State Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science (2009) under supervision of Prof. C. N. R. Rao and did postdoctoral research with Prof. Mercouri G. Kanatzidis at the Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University (2009–2012). He is an Assistant Professor in the New Chemistry Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore. He is pursuing research in solid state inorganic chemistry of metal chalcogenides, thermoelectrics, topological materials, 2D nanosheets and water purification. He has published 90 research papers, 1 book and 4 book chapters. He is an Young Affiliate of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and an Associate of Indian Academy of Science (IASc), Bangalore, India. He is also recipient of Young Scientist Medal-2016 from Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Delhi, India and Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award-2015 from The National Academy of Sciences (NASI), Allahabad, India. He is recipient of IUMRS-MRS Singapore Young Researcher Merit Awards in 2016, and the Materials Research Society of India Medal in 2017.

Shachi Gosavi obtained her Integrated M.Sc. in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, and her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, USA. After post-doctoral work at the University of California San Diego, USA, she joined the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, India as a Reader where her group works on diverse problems in the fields of protein folding and dynamics.

Dr Suman Chakrabarty earned his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from Presidency College, Kolkata, India in 2002 and M.S. degree in Chemical Sciences from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 2005. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2010 (Advisor: Prof. Biman Bagchi). He was a postdoctoral research associated with Prof. Arieh Warshel at University of Southern California, USA (2009–2012). Subsequently Dr. Chakrabarty returned to India and started his career as an independent researcher in the Physical and Materials Chemistry Division, CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India as a Ramanujan Fellow. In 2017, he joined the School of Chemical Sciences in National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar, India as Reader-F. His current research interests are computational modelling and simulation of signal transduction and allosteric regulation in proteins, water mediated interactions and self-assembly related phenomena in soft-condensed matter systems with chemical and topographical heterogeneity.

Amit Paul was born in 1980 in Kolkata, India. He received his B.Sc. from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, and his M.Sc. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai, India. He completed his PhD in 2008 from the Department of Chemistry, University of Pittsburgh under the supervision of Prof. David H. Waldeck. He worked as an energy frontier research center (EFRC)-postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Prof. Thomas J. Meyer between 2009-2011. Since 2011, he is working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal, India. His research interests include electrochemical supercapacitor, electrocatalysis, solid state proton conduction, electron transfer through molecular bridges, and proton-coupled electron transfer.

Dr Kaushik Chatterjee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Engineering and the Centre for Biosystems Science and Engineering of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore (India). He received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the Pennsylvania State University (USA) and completed a post-doctoral training jointly at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Institutes of Health supported by the US National Research Council Research Associateship Program. Currently he leads a research group working on a wide variety of biomaterials intended for use in biomedical devices and tissue scaffolds.

Kana Sureshan obtained his Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Calicut, in 1996 and Ph. D. in Organic Chemistry from the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune in 2002. He carried out his postdoctoral research as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Ehime University, Japan (2002-2004), as a Research Officer at Dept. of Pharmacy and Pharmacology at University of Bath, U. K. (2004-2006) and as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology at Dortmund, Germany (2006-2008). He joined Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram in April 2009. His research interests lie in the area of supramolecular chemistry, carbohydrate chemistry, natural product synthesis and chemical biology.  He is an early career editorial board member of ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering. He is the recipient of Ramanujan fellowship, Swarnajayanti Fellowship, Young Scientist award of YIM-Boston, CRSI- Bronze medal and MRSI-Medal.

Ravi Venkatramani is a reader in the Department of Chemical Sciences, at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. Ravi obtained his Ph.D. in Physics in 2005 from the University of Rochester, NY, USA. His dissertation topic was on the theoretical modeling of nonlinear optical response of molecules in solution. Subsequently, during 2005-2007, Ravi was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, where he studied the molecular mechanism of DNA replication/repair by polymerase enzymes using classical and mixed quantum-classical atomistic simulations. From 2007 – 2012, Ravi was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA which involved the modeling of charge transfer reactions in organic molecules and biological systems. At TIFR, Ravi`s research group develops and applies multi-scale modelling and high performance computational simulation methods to describe biomolecular structure and dynamics. Ravi is also developing theoretical formalisms to describe physicochemical processes in biological/molecular systems such as charge/energy transfer and optical response. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and serves as the secretary to the RSC-West India Section.

Prasenjit Mal was born in 1976 at Lokhesole, Bankura, West Bengal, India.  He obtained his MSc degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur in 1999 and followed by PhD at Indian Institute of technology Kanpur in 2005.  Then he undertook postdoctoctoral studies at University of Siegen in Germany (with Prof Michael Schmittel) as Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (2006-2007) and at University of Cambridge (with Prof Jonathan R Nitschke) in UK as Marie Curie Fellow (2008-2009). He started an independent research career at NISER Bhubaneswar since December 2009. Currently, he is working on the research area of role of multiple cooperative weak interactions (soft force relay) in organic synthesis and mechanochemistry.

Rajarshi Chakrabarti is a theoretical physical chemist by training. He excels in developing Statistical Mechanics based analytically solvable models and also makes use of computer simulations to explore interesting problems in the area of soft matter and chemical physics. He grew up in Kolkata, where he did his bachelors and subsequently masters in Chemistry specializing in Physical Chemistry. In 2003, Rajarshi moved to the Indian Institute of Science to pursue his Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry. After two stints of postdocs at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and University of Stuttgart, he started an independent career in 2013 at the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. His favorite pass times include spending time with his wife and son and playing with his two pet dogs.

Sabuj Kundu obtained his PhD in 2009 from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA under the supervision of Professor Alan S. Goldman. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor William D. Jones at University of Rochester, NY (2009-11) and Professor Maurice Brookhart at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011-13). He returned to Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur as an assistant professor in 2013. He received the DST-INSPIRE fellowship, India. His group is focused on various aspects of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis for sustainable chemical transformations.

Abhishek Dey was born in Calcutta where he did his BSc in the Presidency College. After completing his MSc at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, he did his PhD from Stanford University, CA, USA, in 2007 with Prof. Edward I. Solomon. After two years of postdoctoral work with Prof. James P. Collman he joined IACS in June 2009 where he is now an Associate Professor. He is the recipient of ACS division of inorganic chemistry young investigator award, SPP Young investigator award and he has been young associate of the Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore. He is currently serving as editorial advisory board member to Chemical Communications, ACS Catalysis and Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry. He is an inorganic chemist interested in generation, storage and transfer of energy. A combination of synthesis, self-assembly, spectroscopy, electrochemistry and electronic structure calculations are used to attain these research goals.

Biman Jana was born in West Bengal, India, in 1983. He received his BSc degree (2003) in Chemistry from Calcutta University, India and MSc degree (2005) in chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. He is obtained his PhD in Theoretical Physical chemistry from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India with Professor Biman Bagchi as his advisor. He worked as a Research Associate with Professors Jose Nelson Onuchic from Rice University before returning to India in 2013 to join the faculty of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata, India. His group is working actively to explore the basic physical principles behind biological processes using theoretical concepts and computational techniques of Statistical Mechanics. One of the primary research areas is to explore the molecular origin of ice recognition by antifreeze proteins. In addition, his group is actively working on various different biological problems including mehanochemical cycle of motor proteins, protein folding/unfolding and hydrophobic hydration.

G. Naresh Patwari received his Ph.D. from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai in 2000 working on Intramolecular Vibrational Energy redistribution in substituted benzenes with Prof. Sanjay Wategaonkar. Following, he was JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Tohoku University, Japan with Prof. Naohiko Mikami, where he investigated the formation of dihydrogen bonds in the gas phase. In 2002 he moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign to work with Prof. James M. Lisy on ion-molecule complexes. Subsequently, in 2003 he returned to India to join the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry, where he is presently a Professor. His research interests include intermolecular interactions structure and reactivity. Recently, his group started working on understanding various intermolecular phenomena using internal electric fields. Apart from scientific endeavours, Naresh is also passionate about wildlife.

Anindya Datta was born in Calcutta and obtained his where he did his B. Sc. (Hons.) degree from Calcutta University, studying in Presidency College. His M. Sc. was from Calcutta University and Ph. D. was from Jadavpur University. He did his Ph. D. as a CSIR reseach fellow with Prof. Kankan Bhattacharyya in Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science.  His postdoctoral research was with Prof. Jacob W. Petrich in Iowa State University. After a brief stint in Centre of Advanced Technology, Indore, he joined Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where he is presently a Professor of Chemistry.  He has been named as a recipient of Bronze Medal by Chemical Research Society of India and has been elected to the Fellowship of National Academy of Science, India. His research interest is in ultrafast processes in Chemistry and Materials Science.