Abhik Ghosh
Job description
Biography
Abhik Ghosh grew up in India and did his Ph. D. at the University of Minnesota under the tutelage of Paul G. Gassman, while also extensively collaborating with Jan Almlöf (formerly a professor at UiO and a professor II at UiT). After postdoctoral stints in bioinorganic chemistry with Larry Que and David Bocian, he took up a faculty position at UiT in 1996, where he has been full professor since 2000. He was a Senior Fellow of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (1997-2004) and on several occasions a Visiting Professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand (2006-2015). Since 2021, he has led the UiT’s Center for Sustainable STEM Education.
Abhik has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, and the Journal of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines. He edited the popular science book Letters to a Young Chemist (Wiley, 2011) and coauthored the textbook Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry: A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main Group Elements (Wiley, 2014); the latter won the 2015 PROSE Award for Best Textbook in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences. In 2022, he became a member of the European Academy of Sciences and also received the Hans Fischer Career Award for Lifetime Achievement in Porphyrin Chemistry. As a gay chemist, Abhik has been involved in a variety of projects aimed at diversifying chemistry.
The 50 latest publications is shown on this page. See all publications in Cristin here →
Research interests
Abhik’s research interests center broadly around soft materials based on porphyrin analogues and their applications to both medicine and renewable energy. Current projects in his laboratory focus on (a) synthetic method development, (b) high- and low-valent transition metal compounds and their applications to catalysis and renewable energy, (c) fluorinated materials, (d) photodynamic therapy and cancer theranostics, (e) 2D van der Waals and covalent heterostructures with applications to nanomedicine, (f) dye-sensitized solar cells, and (g) a variety of computer simulations. For recent publications, check out the links below.
CV and publication list (via ORCID)
Recent review articles
- The Hyperporphyrin Concept: A Contemporary Perspective
- The Story of 5d Metallocorroles: From Metal–Ligand Misfits to New Building Blocks for Cancer Phototherapeutics
- Seven Clues to Ligand Noninnocence: The Metallocorrole Paradigm
- Electronic Structure of Corrole Derivatives: Insights from Molecular Structures, Spectroscopy, Electrochemistry, and Quantum Chemical Calculations
Teaching
Abhik teaches introductory inorganic chemistry (KJE-1004) and bioinorganic chemistry (KJE-3201), in addition to a large number of special topics courses on advanced inorganic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, stereochemistry, soft matter, and linear free energy relationships, among others. The textbook used in KJE-1004, Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry, written by Abhik and former UiT "lektor"-student Steffen Berg, introduced a world-first organic-style approach to teaching inorganic chemistry and won the prestigious PROSE Award for Best Textbook in Mathematical and Physical Sciences in 2015.
From 2021, Abhik leads the Beacon project UiT Center for Sustainable STEM Education, aimed broadly at placing sustainability at the center of chemistry and STEM education at UiT. The project also aims at promoting diversity and inclusion in the broadest sense (see, e.g., a recent biography of Martin Gouterman, one of the first openly gay chemists of modern times, as well as a shorter version). In 2022, Abhik also won the Faculty of Science's student-led Teaching Prize.
Abhik and his collaborators take particular pride in offering semester-long (or shorter) research projects to both UiT undergraduates and exchange students. Over the years, more than 30 bachelor and exchange students have published their first scientific papers based on their research in Abhik's lab!
