Dr. Akella Sivaramakrishna was born in Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh), India. He is currently a Professor at Department of Chemistry, School of Advanced Sciences at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore in India. He received his B.Sc. degree from Sri Ramachandra Arts and Science College at Kothagudem in Telangana, India. He was the recipient of a Gold Medal for securing the first rank at the master’s level and received his Ph.D. degree in 2000 at Andhra University under the supervision of Prof. U. Muralikrishna. Then he worked with Prof. M.N. Sudheendra Rao at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai in India with the focus on inorganic heterocyclic compounds. After that, he went to the Ben-Gurion University in Israel to work with Prof. Daniel Kost on the development of hypercoordinated silicates for two years before he moved to Prof. John R. Moss at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and worked for four years on synthetic organometallic chemistry of metal-alkyls, metal-alkenyls and metallacycles and catalysis of platinum group metals. Further, he also spent a couple of years with Prof. F. Gordon A. Stone at Baylor University (Waco-Texas) where he concentrated on the synthesis and chemistry of mono-carboranes. He is the author of over 150 journal research articles. He has been associated with more than 50 invited talks at various national and international conferences. Dr. Sivaramakrishna’s research interests include the synthesis and applications of organometallic complexes and functionalized polyurethane foams for catalytic organic transformations. His current research has been supported by DST-SERB, CSIR, DAE-BRNS, and VIT University.

Title of Talk : Development of New FunctionalizedPolyurethane Foams - Promising Applications in Catalysis and Separation Processes