Mihir Kanti Chaudhuri obtained his PhD (1973) from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; and Dr rer. net. (1975) from the University of Ruhr, Germany. His areas of specialization are inorganic chemistry synthesis, structure and reactivity studies. He has been Professor, Department of Chemistry, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong Vice-Chancellor, Tezpur University and is presently at the IIT-Guwahati.

Academic and Research Achievements: Chaudhuri's major achievements are in fluoro and peroxo (dioxygen) chemistry of metals and non-metals, acetylacetonatometals, and development of newer reagents. He has developed several new synthetic methodologies and synthesized fluoro compounds of Be, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Bi, Zr, U and Th, as well as of B and P. He worked on fluoride-assisted stabilization of unusual oxidation levels of metals like Mn (III) and V (III). He synthesized and made structural assessment of dioxygen/ peroxo complexes of Ti, V, Mo, Zr, U Th and As and also of B and P, many of which have biochemical and photochemical relevance, and some of which are important from the magnetochemical and structural point of view. His synthesis of a large variety of metal acetlacetonates has provided an easy access to this class of highly useful compounds. He has also developed new reagents based on fluorochromates (VI) and peroxovanadates (V) for a variety of oxidations including selective oxidations of secondary alcohols in the presence of primary alcohols.

Other Contributions: Chaudhuri served as an expert for SERC (DST), CSIR, COSIST (UGC), Union Ministry of Environment and Forests special committees of Meghalaya Government and many more.

Award and Honours: Chaudhuri received SS Bhatnagar Prize, CSIR (1989), P Natrajan Endowment Award (1998), Chemito Award (2002), and SS Sandhu Award of Indian Chemical Society (2005). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.