From Andrews High School in Kolkata to Vigyan Yuva Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award 2025: IISER scientist Dibyendu Das’s journey

Currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata, Das is the sole awardee in Chemistry for 2025. The award — among India’s most prestigious honours for scientific excellence — recognises his pioneering work in systems chemistry, a field that explores how life-like systems can emerge from simple chemical building blocks.

Born in Guwahati and educated in Kolkata, Das traces his roots to Andrews High School in Jodhpur Park and Rajabazar Science College, University of Calcutta, where he completed his MSc in Chemistry. He went on to pursue a PhD from the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science and postdoctoral research at Emory University, Atlanta, USA.

“Chemistry and biology always fascinated me,” he said. “I was always torn between the two, but chemistry gave me the lens to understand how living matter might have first evolved. My work overlaps both, it’s a marriage of chemistry and biology.”

At IISER Kolkata, Das’s laboratory is working to create synthetic systems that mimic the properties of life — a project he calls “Life 2.0.”

“We are studying how networks of reactions can display emergent, life-like properties,” he explained. “The idea is to understand how living matter first evolved on Earth and whether we can recreate such systems in the lab.”

Reflecting on the award’s significance, he said, “This is a new and risky field — any new field is risky in any walk of life — but this award tells us that our efforts are being recognised. It will inspire my students, even the first-year ones, to believe in what we are doing.”

For young scientists, his advice is both clear and heartfelt: “I know it’s easy to say from my side, but if you are interested in something, it has to be good. Follow your interests. If you’re passionate, you’ll build the skills. Basic sciences are deeply rewarding. They let you be creative and contribute something truly meaningful. I would say they are more rewarding — and I’m biased maybe — than engineering or medical science. There you get a job, maybe early, but here you can really be creative and really do something that can essentially be useful for real-world applications.”

As for what lies ahead, Das and his team are setting their sights higher. “Our big goal is to create living-matter-like objects that can perform cycles of metabolism and replication just like life itself. It’s a big challenge, but we are getting there, step by step… so that we can create the same with small chemicals in a beaker — and that will be really cool. So we are getting there; at one point, maybe in 10-15 years, we will. Even if it is a big-ticket problem, we want to pursue it.”

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