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Home  »  Soumya Sree Samal

Soumya Sree Samal

Academic background:

I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Khallikote Autonomous College, Berhampur (Odisha). And then, to pursue my studies further, I joined the Department of Chemistry at Pondicherry University (Puducherry) for my master’s degree. During my M.Sc project, I worked in the Supramolecular and Organometallic Synthesis Lab, wherein I developed my interest in developing metal complexes that can find applications in various organic transformations. After completing my master’s degree, I joined Dr. Ekambaram Balaraman’s Research group as a project assistant in 2021 under the project “Conversion of CO2 to value-added products.” I started my doctoral research at IISER-Tirupati in August 2022. My research is focused on synthesizing new catalytic systems that find wide applications in hydrogen generation and in several chemical transformations.

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Soumya Sree Samal's Resume

Research interest:

Several chemical transformations in their classical approaches tend to involve multiple steps and a huge amount of energy and release copious waste into the environment as byproducts. Energy storage and environmental protection are the two most significant challenges to sustainable development in the present world. Therefore, there is a need for the development of a novel and efficient catalytic system that can serve the problem well. My research interest thus mainly focuses on the synthesis of various homogenous transition-metal-based complexes using the bidentate and tridentate ligand framework, which find tremendous applications in numerous organic transformations that are green, atom-economical, and step-economical, etc.

Advisor information:

Dr. Ekambaram Balaraman, a chemist studying transition-metal catalysis and an enthusiastic chemistry teacher, has received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Hyderabad and Postdoctoral research from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He has worked as a senior scientist (July 2013-Dec 2018) at CSIR-NCL, Pune. He is a recipient of the Swarna Jayanti Fellowship (2020), Bronze Medal from the Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) – 2020, Thieme Journal Award (2020), The Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association (APA) for the Young Scientist (2019), AV Rama Rao (AVRA) Young Scientist Award (2018). He is an elected member of The National Academy of Sciences, India (2020), Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), Affiliate Member of International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), Member of the Indian Nation Young Academy of Science (INYAS), INSA (2018-2022), and Life member of Catalysis Society of India.

Dr. E. Balaraman’s research has mainly focused on catalyst (Homogeneous & Heterogeneous) development for dehydrogenation reactions, hydrogen auto-transfer reactions, C1-chemistry (CO2 to value-added chemicals), green chemistry by heterogeneous catalysis, and Ziegler-Natta catalysis. A highlight of his research involves the use of pincer ligands, particularly those with substituents that absorb or release molecular hydrogen. Also, he examined the activation of C-C, C-H, N-H, and O-H bonds. His research mostly involves designing and developing new catalytic systems for energy and environmental applications. Dr. E. Balaraman has significantly contributed to catalyst design for various important reactions for both fundamental research and industrial applications. He has also contributed to heterogeneous acceptorless dehydrogenation and related reactions based on developed nanocatalysts for CO2 utilization and its direct application as a renewable raw material for polymer synthesis.

Courses taken:

Four courses (16 credits) and one audit course were taken in the first year of the
Ph.D. program with A+ grade in all the courses.

1.      CHM711: Molecular Symmetry and Spectroscopy

2.      CHM714: Transition Metal Chemistry

3.      CHM622: Organic Synthesis I

4.      CHM623: Organometallic Chemistry

5.      CHM741: Inorganic Spectroscopy

Internal Teaching Assistantships:

1.      General Chemistry II (CHM121, 2nd semester)

2.      Chemistry Laboratory II (CHM 212, 3rd semester, ongoing)

 

External Teaching assistantships:

  1. Modern Engineering Materials (Unit 2) and Instrumental Methods & Applications (Unit 5) (at Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering (SVCE) from Nov 2021 – present).

 

Publication:

  1. U. Kumar, S. Verma, A. A. Sahoo, S. S. Samal, J. Mohanty, A. Murali, B. Manimaran*. Chalcogenalato-bridged rhenium(I)-based ester functionalized flexible dinuclear metallacrown ethers: Cation binding, molecular recognition and docking studies, Polyhedron, 2022, 226,116084. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poly.2022.116084