Swadhin Mandal is a professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Kolkata. Earlier, he was head of the Department of Chemical Sciences at IISER Kolkata from 2018 to 2020. He earned his BS and MS degrees from the University of Kalyani. In 2002, he received his doctorate from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, under the supervision of Prof. S. S. Krishnamurthy. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Robert C. Haddon at the University of California, Riverside, USA and as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow with Prof. Herbert W. Roesky at the University of Göttingen, Germany. He joined IISER Kolkata as an assistant professor in 2007 and was promoted to full professor in 2018.

Academic and Research Achievements: His current research interests are mainly focused on developing concepts on how to avoid metals during various catalytic processes. Generally, such catalytic processes have been heavily relying on the use of rare, expensive and very often toxic metals.  For example, his group has developed ways to accomplish C-C cross coupling reactions without any metals. In this direction, his research group has been exploring various low-valent organo-main group species for their efficacy in catalytic CO₂ reduction and functionalization to  various value added products avoiding any transition metal based catalysts. In particular, his research group has discovered various new chemical transformations of CO_2. His research has been published in several high-profile international journals including Nature, Nature Catalysis, JACS, Angew Chem, Chem Sci, and others. 

Awards and honours: Prof Mandal is a recipient of various awards and recognitions. He is the recipient of the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, in 2020. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Chemical Sciences in 2018. He was also awarded the Erna and Jakob Michael Visiting Professorship at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, in 2022. He has been invited as a visiting professor at  IIT Bombay during 2020-2023 and Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA, in 2024. He has served as an Editorial Advisory Board member in various international journals including Chemical Science  (2020-2022), Inorganic Chemistry (2019- 2022), Organometallics (2013-2015) and J. Chemical Science (2018-2022). He is a recipient of the SERB Distinguished Investigator Award 2018. Also, he was awarded the CRSI bronze medal in 2018 and the YIM-Young Scientist Award by YIM-Boston in 2012.