Rate My Professor Lakshmi Mannepalli

Professor Lakshmi Mannepalli is an Honorary Professor in the School of Engineering, College of Engineering, Science and Environment, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She serves as the Dr. B. P. Godrej Distinguished Professor of Green Chemistry and Sustainability Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India. Her extensive career includes positions as Director of the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, and Head of the Inorganic and Physical Chemistry Division there, which she joined as Scientist B in 1984. Professor Mannepalli earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Kurukshetra University in 1982, along with M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees.

Her research specializes in the development of reusable heterogeneous catalysts utilizing nanocrystalline MgO, ZnO, hydrotalcites, and apatites for environmentally benign organic transformations. These include asymmetric Henry and Michael reactions, Claisen-Schmidt condensation followed by epoxidation for chiral epoxy ketones, selective oxidation of alcohols, reduction of nitroarenes in aqueous media at room temperature, and copper-catalyzed N-arylation of heterocycles with chloroarenes. Key publications encompass 'Efficient Sensitization of Nanocrystalline TiO2 Films by a Near-IR-Absorbing Unsymmetrical Zinc Phthalocyanine' (Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2007), 'Gold nanoparticles stabilized on nanocrystalline magnesium oxide as an active catalyst for reduction of nitroarenes in aqueous medium at room temperature' (Green Chemistry, 2012), 'Nanocrystalline MgO for asymmetric Henry and Michael reactions' (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2005), 'Bifunctional nanocrystalline MgO for chiral epoxy ketones via Claisen-Schmidt condensation-asymmetric epoxidation reactions' (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2004), 'The First Example of Activation of Molecular Oxygen by Nickel in Ni-Al Hydrotalcite' (Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2001), and 'Design and evolution of copper apatite catalysts for N-arylation of heterocycles with chloro- and fluoroarenes' (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2005). Her scholarly contributions have received thousands of citations. Professor Mannepalli is a Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in Chemical Sciences, elected in 2018, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, since 2008.