Akash Kaithal

Dr. Akash Kaithal was born in Kanpur, India. He obtained his Integrated M.Sc. degree from the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar, India, where he carried out his master's thesis under the supervision of Prof. Chidambaram Gunanathan. He received his Ph.D. with Summa Cum Laude honors from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, France, where he conducted his doctoral research under the supervision of Prof. Walter Leitner and Prof. Elsje Alessandra Quadrelli, respectively. Following his doctoral studies, Dr. Kaithal pursued his first postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, Germany, under the guidance of Prof. Walter Leitner and Dr. Christophe Werlé. He subsequently joined the University of Münster, Germany, as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Frank Glorius. He also served as a Chemical Scientist at C1 Green Chemicals AG, Berlin, Germany, where he contributed to the development of sustainable methanol production technologies. His research has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the Chinese-German Chemical Association (CGCA) Young Researchers Award (2021), the Borchers-Plakette Ph.D. Award (2021) from RWTH Aachen University, and the Ernst Haage Prize (2020) from the Max Planck Society. Currently, Dr. Kaithal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India. His research focuses on homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, organometallic chemistry, and the sustainable conversion of renewable feedstocks into fuels and value-added chemicals.