Graduate student Sagnik Chakrabarti was selected as the recipient of the 2025 Theron Standish Piper Award for Outstanding Inorganic Ph.D. Thesis in the Department of Chemistry.
In a special presentation to the department on May 13, 2025, Chakrabarti presented his thesis, "Low-valent Nickel and Palladium Compounds Relevant to Cross-coupling Catalysis."
Advised by chemistry Prof. Liviu Mirica, Chakrabarti's doctoral research focused on understanding and developing ways to control radical intermediates in various aspects of catalysis with nickel and palladium compounds. Some key findings include the development of a class of stable but catalytically active Ni(I) compounds.
"We put the highly reactive Ni(I) state in a bottle," Chakrabarti explained. "And in a separate contribution, I provided evidence of elusive paramagnetic states in a small-molecule model of a Ni-containing hydrogen processing enzyme. I also stabilized a class of Pd(I) compounds proposed as intermediates in photodriven transformations for over thirty years but had eluded isolation."
Overall, Chakrabarti said, his dissertation research has shed light on hidden, unstable intermediates in catalysis using nickel and palladium, along with developing hyper-stable analogs of such intermediates.
"The Ni(I) compounds developed in my PhD are some of the first bench-stable Ni(I) compounds that can be stored under an inert atmosphere for several months without any decay. These compounds can potentially perform reactions that cannot be catalyzed by traditional Ni catalysts, in pharmaceutical or process chemistry settings," he explained.
After graduation, Chakrabarti plans to pursue a postdoctoral position in an orthogonal field with the ultimate goal of leading a research group.
Chakrabarti said he is thankful for his PhD advisor, Professor Mirica, for giving him the independence to pursue projects that piqued his curiosity and for always being a voice of reason. And, he said, he is also thankful for his undergraduate mentor, Prof. Abhishek Dey, Professor, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, who taught him the ways of science and chemistry and for his thesis committee member, Illinois chemistry Prof. Tom Rauchfuss, "for being an encyclopedia of inorganic and organometallic chemistry."
While a graduate student, Chakrabarti was the co-chair of the International Chemists Association for three years and enjoyed organizing events for the international graduate students in chemistry. He was also one of six graduate students who organized the first Changwoo Park-Walter Klemperer Inorganic and Materials Allerton Conference in 2023, which he described as "a memorable experience."
In addition to the Klemperer award, Chakrabarti was also the recipient of the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award (2025) and ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry Student Travel Award (2022).
