Prof. H. Ila is a Principal Advisor, Chemistry, Jubilant Discovery Centre, Jubilant Biosys Ltd, Bangalore and an honorary chair professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR).
Prof. Hiriyakkanavar Ila received her MSc from DAV College, Kanpur in 1964 and was the first woman to receive the PhD in 1968 from IIT Kanpur. She did postdoctoral work at Purdue University, Lafayette in 1969 and was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich (1984-85). She was a scientist at Medicinal Chemistry Division, Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow (1970-76) and then moved to North Eastern Hill University, Shillong (1977) as a founding faculty member and continued there for nearly 18 years. She moved to IIT Kanpur as Professor (1995) and continued there till her superannuation (2006). She was a Marie-Curie Visiting Fellow at University of Cambridge (1995) and a Visiting Professor at Locker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, USC, Los Angeles (2002), at Institut de Investigacuiones, Sovilla, Spain, and at Kuwait University (2007).
Prof. Ila has made prolific contributions in heterocyclic chemistry developing novel general and efficient methods for biologically important heterocyclic scaffolds utilizing polarized ketene S,S-and N,S-acetals as versatile building blocks. She was responsible for building the Chemistry Department at newly established University, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong with state-of-art laboratory, instrumental and library facilities.
Prof.Ila is a member of Advisory Board of 'Eurasian Conference of Heterocyclic Chemistry' since 2000 and a scientific Editor and member of Control Editorial Board of the journal Arkivoc since 2004.
