Meet Rajat

Rajat grew up in West Bengal, India and finished his undergraduate studies at IIT-Kharagpur, working on synthesizing modified carbohydrates. After that, he spent one year as a CSIR Junior Research Fellow, working with Prof. Saumen Hajra on asymmetric organocatalysis. Rajat obtained his PhD from Texas A&M University, under the supervision of Prof. Steven E Wheeler, where he honed his knowledge of organic structure and reactivity through the lens of state-of-the-art computation. Rajat then relocated to Europe and spent three years as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Benjamin List at the MPI Kohlenforschung-Germany, where he worked on asymmetric olefin functionalization. To promote synergy between theory and experimentation, Rajat created an online platform: VISTA.

Beside research, Rajat enjoys travelling, nature photography, and watching stand-up comedy. Rajat is an avid coffee addict, although to pay homage to the great German tradition, he drinks beer too!

rajat.maji ‘at’ chem.ucla.edu (He|him|his)