Narayanasami Sathyamurthy received BSc and MSc degrees from Annamalai University. He did his PhD under the guidance of LM Raff from Oklahoma State University and had postdoctoral training with JC Polanyi at the University of Toronto. Thereafter, he worked as Lecturer (1978- ), Professor (1985- ), Head (1998-2001), Department of Chemistry, and Dean, Faculty Affairs (2002-04), Institute Chair Professor (2007- ), all at IIT Kanpur. He is the founder Director, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali (2007- ).

Academic and Research Achievements: Sathyamurthy has made notable contributions on the sensitivity of molecular reaction dynamics, accuracy of the potential energy surface, effect of reagent rotation, vibration and orientation on reaction cross section, chaos and fractals in chemical dynamics, reactive scattering resonances in atom-molecule collisions, transition state spectrum, isotope effect on Raman excitation profiles, channel control in chemical reactions, vibration mediated photodissociation, structure and stability of water clusters, water molecules in a confined environment, blue shift in stretching frequency of molecules in a confined environment, host-guest interaction in endohedral fullerenes, stacking and spreading interaction in N-heteroaromatic systems, intra- and inter- molecular hydrogen bond, and atomic and molecular clusters as designer materials for the nanoworld. He has mentored 18 students for their PhD.

Other Contributions: Sathyamurthy served as Chairman, National Scientific Committee, 33rd International Chemistry Olympiad, Mumbai (2001). He is the founder President, Indian Association of Chemistry Teachers (2002-04) and Member, Indian Academy of Sciences (IISc) Council (2001-06), and General Committee, International Conference on the Physics of Electronic and Atomic Collisions (1993-96). He edited the publications: Reaction Dynamics: Recent Advances (Narosa, New Delhi and Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1991); Proceedings of Indian National Science Academy (Part A) (2000-05); served as Member on the Editorial boards of the Proceedings of Indian Academy of Sciences (Chemical Sciences) (1993-2000), IIT Kanpur's Series of Advanced Texts (1995-2000), Indian Journal of Chemistry, Section A (2001-07), Indian Journal of Chemistry, Section B (2005-07), International Journal of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (World Scientific, 2002- ), International Reviews in Physical Chemistry (2005- ); and Editorial Advisory Board of Journal of Physical Chemistry (2007- ).

Awards and Honours: Professor Sathyamurthy was conferred the Young Scientist Medal by INSA (1980), Young Associate, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1983), Rev. Yedanapalli Memorial Award by the Indian Chemical Society (1989), SS Bhatnagar Prize in Chemical Sciences (1990), Sir CV Raman Award, Hari Om Ashram Trust Award by UGC (1997), FICCI Award (2001), Silver Medal by the Chemical Research Society of India (2001), and Professor Navneetha Rao Best Teacher Award by Andhra Pradesh Academy of Sciences (2003). He was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore (1990), and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (2005). He was INSA Research Fellow (1989-91), Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow (1986), JC Bose Fellow by DST (2006- ) and Honorary Professor, SN Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, Kolkata (1995-98) and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore (2000-02; 2007- ).