Vinod K. Singh

Vinod K. Singh was born on 9 September 1959, in Kshatriya family in Anantpur, a village in district Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. He is a Rahul and Namita Gautam Chair Professor of Chemistry at IIT Kanpur. Singh’s major research contribution is in an area of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, more specifically, asymmetric synthesis. He has developed several new chiral ligands/catalysts for enantioselective reactions. One of the chiral catalysts developed in his laboratory, called “Singh’s Catalyst”, is an efficient chiral organocatalyst for enantioselective aldol reaction in aqueous medium. He has accomplished total synthesis of several bioactive natural products. His work is documented in more than 160 research publications. Furthermore, Professor Singh has guided 35 PhD students and currently has more than 12 students and postdoctoral fellows working with him.