Chandrasekhar is an inorganic Chemist. He obtained his Ph. D from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1982 and after a post-doctoral stint at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India, where he is a full professor. He is currently on deputation to the National Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhubaneswar, India as its Director. Chandrasekhar’s research interests are in the general areas of main-group inorganic chemistry and molecular materials. He has published over 325 papers, a monograph and several book chapters. He has extensive collaborations with research groups in Spain, France, England and Germany. He has been recognized both in India and outside for his contributions including membership of the editorial boards of several journals, awards such as the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India and the Wilhelm-Bessel Prizeof the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany. He is a Fellow of all the science academies of India as well as the academy of sciences, Trieste, Italy.Fabrice Pointillart obtained his PhD in physics and chemistry of materials from Pierre et Marie Curie University in 2005, supervised by Profs. C. Train and M. Verdaguer. After a two-year period of postdoctoral research at the Department of Chemistry “Ugo Schiff” and INSTM Research Unit, University of Florence with Profs. R. Sessoli and D. Gatteschi, he joined the University of Rennes 1 in 2007, as a CNRS researcher. His current research interests are focused on multifunctional molecular materials based on tetrathiafulvalene ligands combining single-molecule magnet behavior and optical properties. He has extensive collaborations with research groups in Switzerland, Japan, India, Russia and Italy. He was awarded of the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2014 and received the ERC consolidator grant in 2016 (acronym: MULTIPROSMM,full title: MULTIple PROperties Single Molecule Magnets, N° 725184).
