Thrust Areas in Biochemistry and Biophysical Chemistry (i) Protein Chemistry & Spectroscopy, Structure-Function Elucidation of Various Small Heat Shock Proteins Related to Different Diseases (Cataract, Leprosy and Tuberculosis). (ii) AAA+ATPase, Screening and validation of Antibacterial and Anticancer drugs
Thrust Areas in Inorganic Chemistry(i) Synthesis and Coordination Aspects of Homo and Heterometallic Complexes; Metal Based Anticancer/Imaging Agents; Functional Materials and Luminescent Materials; Nanoparticle Based Sensors. (ii) Coordination Chemistry with an application of magnetic materials, Supramolecular assembly, MRI contrast agents, Fluorescent Chemosensors for biological molecules, ions, hazardous chemicals and explosives.
Ionic liquids as electrolytes for Lithium Ion Batteries
Thrust Areas in Organic Chemistry (i) Heterocyclic Chemistry, Asymmetric synthesis using chiral pool approach; Enantioselective catalysis and new reaction methods; New molecular entities with biological properties; Dipolar Cycloadditions; C-H functionalization, Pericyclic reactions, Metathesis, Umpolung chemistry, Radical chemistry, traditional & newer functional group transformations for application in marine alkaloids synthesis, terpenoids and polyketide based natural products, Anticancer and Antimicrobial activities of plant-derived natural products. (ii) Carbohydrate Chemistry, novel synthetic methods development, Bioactive Natural and Unnatural Products synthesis (iii) Supramolecular Chemistry, Molecular Recognition through Solid State; Metal- Organic and Covalent Open Frame (MOF and COF) Compounds. (iv) Polymer chemistry: Synthesis of Chiral Polymers and their applications in chiral induction; Synthesis of Achiral and Chiral Resins and their applications in synthesis; PIL stabilized metal nanoparticles and their applications; Polyelectrolyte-DNA interaction studies; PILs for gas separation membranes; Synthesis of MIPs and resins for nuclear waste treatment; Synthesis of (RAFT derived) ionic, pH, temperature and solvent responsive homo- and block copolymers towards their self-assembling for drug delivery. (v) Design, Synthesis and Characterization of Peptides using CD, Fluorescence, ITC and NMR. Redesigning known drugs for other Therapeutic applications. (vi) Enabling technologies for organic synthesis: Photocatalysis, Synthetic organic electrochemistry, Photoelectrochemistry, Transition metal catalysis, flow chemistry. (vii) Hydrogels, nanocatalysts and electrodes for water splitting and other electrochemical reactions, responsive polymer networks, self healing and shape memory polymers, development of solid electrolytes and flexible electronics devices, batteries and actuators

Thrust Areas in Physical, Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (i) Time-resolved spectroscopy on molecules and materials: Developing spectroscopic tools and photomaterials; Harvesting triplets from Singlet fission; Photophysics of thermally activated delayed fluorescence; Long- range charge separation in emerging photomaterials. (ii) Molecular modelling; Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. (iii) Development and application of multi-configurational Quantum Mechanical Methods to study energetics and dynamics of bound and transient states; Investigation of photochemical reactions in the non-adiabatic (“beyond-Born- Oppenheimer”) realm; Computational modelling of chemical reactions using quantum mechanical (QM) and mixed quantum mechanical – molecular mechanical (QM/MM) methods; Investigation of bacterial resistance toward beta-lactam based antibiotic drugs using QM/MM methods.