Saikat Banerjee Discusses His Career Journey in Spectroscopy

In this episode of “Pathways in Spectroscopy,” Saikat Banerjee discusses his background in analytical spectroscopy.

Saikat Banerjee: Spectroscopy has been the backbone of my scientific training. It all started during my master's program in India with fluorescence spectroscopy. We looked at chemosensors for in vitro and in vivo applications. I had a lot of fun doing that. So that was my first introduction in laboratory for fluorescence spectroscopy.

That got me started, and I then wanted to do and practice more science in the lab. And that brought me to the United States. I started my Ph.D. in 2014 at the University of Minnesota, and there I had the chance to work extensively with infrared (IR) spectroscopy at organic temperatures. We looked at unstable iron complexes that mimic active sites of enzymes and lived for seconds even at cryogenic temperatures. We tried to understand their stability and also their reactivity for catalyst applications and UV-vis-NIR was the first spectroscopy tool we looked at to understand. Then, of course, using FT-IR Raman spectroscopy on these unstable intermediates was a huge challenge, so it was also a great learning experience. And then during my Ph.D., I also did a lot of variable temperature NMR spectroscopy to look at these iron complexes, and that has been the backbone of my scientific training.

I’m really grateful to the team back at the University of Minnesota. During my postdoc at Northwestern University, I focused on material science and foundational analytical chemistry much more. During my postdoc, we looked at zeolites and supported gold nanoparticles for catalysis in their analytical chemistry. Tools-wise, we were using UV spectroscopy and IR spectroscopy to understand material systems, and I was still using my NMR knowledge developed during my Ph.D. in my postdoc, but in solid-state NMR, we looked at magic angle spinning tools. That was really cool that I got to utilize that knowledge during my postdoc. I’ve been with DuPont for about four years now in the lab manager role, and in this role, it's really understanding the problem first, and the tools next.

So, in this case, spectroscopy-wise, FT-IR is indispensable as the first go-to tool. NMR spectroscopy has been great too. We utilize the capability through our DuPont corporate analytical laboratories, but the training that I've had in Ph.D. and postdoc helped me a lot.

You can view other episodes of “Pathways in Spectroscopy” at the below link here.