Dr. Pralok Kumar Samanta was born in East Medinipur, West Bengal, India 1987. He completed B. Sc. in Chemistry (Honours) from Calcutta University. Then he was an integrated Ph. D. student at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata, where he completed his M. Sc. in Chemical Sciences. He then joined the group of Prof. Swapan K. Pati at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore. He earned his Ph.D. degree in the area of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry. Dr. Samanta was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Jean-Luc Bredas at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and in the group of Prof. Niall J. English at University College Dublin. Currently, Dr. Samanta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) -Pilani (Hyderabad campus). He worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (GITAM, Hyderabad campus) before joining BITS-Pilani. His research focuses mainly on understanding the electronic, magnetic, transport, and photophysical properties of organic and organic-inorganic hybrid molecules and materials via a combination of quantum mechanical approaches and molecular dynamics simulations; and designing novel materials for optoelectronic applications. 

Dr. Samanta received three research grants as a principal investigator (PI) and published more than 40 research articles in peer-reviewed journals. 

Football and Cricket are his favorite.

Personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/pralok87