Biman Bagchi received his undergraduate degree from Presidency College, Kolkata in 1974 and MSc from Calcutta University (1976). He obtained his PhD degree from Brown University Providence in 1980. He was a Research Associate at the James Franck Institute, University of Chicago (1981-83), where he worked with Professors David W Oxtoby, Graham Fleming and Stuart Rice and at the University of Maryland (1983-84) with Robert Zwanzig. Academic and Research Achievements: Bagchi joined the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 1984 as a Lecturer and initiated both teaching and research in theoretical physical chemistry, mainly in the area of molecular relaxation in liquids, where he has made original and pioneering contributions. They include dynamics of biological and chemical reactions, phase transitions, relaxation in glassy liquids, liquid crystals, salvation dynamics, biological water, protein folding, electron transfer reactions, Forster energy transfer, electrochemistry, conjugated polymers and many others. He has published more than 340 research articles many of which are highly cited and mentored a large number of students including about 16 PhD students.

Other Contributions: Professor Bagchi has organized several national and international conferences at IISc. He has also developed several new courses for PhD students and has been on the Editorial Boards of several national and international journal such as Journal of Physical Chemistry, Chemical Physics Letters, Phys Chem Comm, Indian Journal of Chemistry, Procedings of the Indian Academy of Science, Journal of Molecular Liquids (Elsevier), Theoretical Chemistry Accounts (Springer), etc.

Awards and Honours: Biman Bagchi received INSA Medal for Young Scientists (1986); Homi Bhabha Fellow (1989); AK Bose Memorial Medal of INSA (1990); SS Bhatnagar Prize (1991); GD Birla Award (1997); Dr Jagdish Shankar Memorial Lecture Award (1997) and the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lecture Award of INSA (2008); BC Laha Memorial Lecture Award (2001); Alumni Excellence Award in Research, IISc (2002); Goyal Prize in Chemistry (2003); Amrut Mody Chair Professorship (2004); JC Bose National Fellowship (2006); Mizushima-Raman Lecture Award JSPS-DST (2006). He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science, Bangalore and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).