Subrata Patra was born in Sohagpur, a small village in India in 1994. He obtained his BSc (Hons. In chemistry) degree in chemistry from Midnapore College affiliated with Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, India. In 2015, he qualified for the IIT-JAM exam and was admitted to the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT G), which is one of India’s admired institutions. He completed his MSc in chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Tharmalingam Punniyamurthy. During this time, he was awarded a Summer Student Training Scholarship by the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata (IISER K), where he completed summer research in the bio-inorganic laboratory of Prof. Rabindranath Mukherjee. During his masters, he cleared both the CSIR-NET and GATE exams, which are highly competitive exams in India.
In 2017, he moved to the University of Alberta, Canada, and started his research work in the laboratory of Prof. Derrick L. J. Clive. Next year he joined the laboratory of Prof. Jeffrey M. Stryker and worked on the formation of pyarazole and pyrazolidinone heterocycles by copper-mediated and electrochemical pathways. He obtained his second master’s in organic chemistry from the same laboratory and the thesis entitled ‘Regioselective Synthesis of Hydrazines and Heterocycles by Catalytic and Electrochemical N–N Bond Formation’.
He subsequently moved to the University of Fribourg and joined the laboratory of Prof. Dmitry Katayev as a graduate student. His current research involves functionalization of activated and un-activated hydrocarbons, the selective introduction of different functional groups by electro/photochemically. When he is not electrifying chemicals in the lab, he is likely hiking, camping, photographing, and traveling.
