Dr C Kalidas retired as Professor, Department of Chemistry, IIT Madras. He was also an Emeritus Scientist (CSIR), at IIT Madras during 1996–99. He visited the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry (later known as the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, Germany) first as a German academic exchange scholar in 1968–69 and again as a senior fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1976–77 and 1990–91. He was a national representative and subsequently an associate member of the Commision V.8 of IUPAC, Oxford, UK. His research interests centred around electrochemistry, fast reaction kinetics and macrocyclic chemistry. He has guided several students for their Ph.D degrees and published papers in national and international journals. He has more than three decades of teaching and research experience and is the author (or co-author) of four books till date.
Dr M V Sangaranarayanan is currently Dr S R Rajagopalan Institute Chair Professor at the Department of Chemistry, IIT Madras. He obtained his Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and was subsequently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Germany. He worked as Scientist at the CSIR–Central Electrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi before joining IIT Madras in 1993 where he has been teaching physical chemistry courses for B.Tech, M.Sc and Ph.D since then. His research contributions pertain to the analysis of electrochemical systems from different perspectives. He has published 125 papers in refereed journals and co-authored Textbook of Physical Chemistry with Universities Press. He is the recipient of the Prof C N R Rao National Prize for research in chemical sciences in 2017.