Dr. Sourav Pal, an Indian theoretical chemist, is the director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata and a professor of chemistry at IIT Bombay. Dr. Pal is an ex-director of CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory Pune, and adjunct professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune.
Dr. Pal did his integrated five years MSc. in Chemistry from IIT Kanpur in 1977 and subsequently completed his doctorate from Indian Association for the Cultivation Of Science (IACS) in 1985, followed by a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida in 1986. Dr. Pal joined National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune as Scientist in 1982 and continued to work there as Head of Physical and Materials Chemistry Division till 2015.
Dr. Pal is known for his contribution in quantum chemistry, especially in the field of coupled cluster based methods. His major scientific accomplishments include rigorous development of expectation value as well as extended coupled-cluster functional, development of the response properties to multi-reference coupled cluster (MRCC) theory, the effect of electron correlation and role of exchange effects on the low energy electron molecule scattering, introduction of complex scaling and complex absorbing potential in MRCC theory to calculate electron-atom and electron-molecule resonances accurately. He has developed a non-iterative approximation to coupled-perturbed Kohn-Sham density functional theoretic equations for calculation of non-linear properties, which is implemented in the developers' version of deMon code.
Dr. Pal is the recipient of the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Chemical Sciences in 2000.
