Organometallics & Sustainable Catalysis (Ekambaram Balaraman)

At the present scenario, the chemical industry is a key constituent of the Indian economy, accounting for about 1.38% of the nation’s GDP. Catalytic processes are preliminarily involved in the synthesis of 80% of all industrially produced chemicals. In view of this, design and development of innovative new catalytic systems has clear, direct and long-term benefits to the chemical manufacturing sector and to the broader knowledge-based economy. Among the leading approaches to develop new catalytic systems, rational design is next to combinatorial and high-throughput experimentations. Dr. Ekambaram Balaraman’s research interest mainly includes mechanistic approach to design and development of novel catalysts/catalytic materials for fundamentally important organic transformations which is of industrial importance. In particular dehydrogenation of feedstock chemicals (hydrogen generation), C-1 chemistry (includes CO2 to value added chemicals and polymer), and development of novel donors in Ziegler-Natta polymerization catalysis.