Rate My Professor Seema Rani

Dr. Seema Rani is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at SRM University-AP. She completed her Ph.D. in 2016 from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali, India, her M.Sc. in 2011 from Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, and her B.Sc. in 2009 from S.D. (P.G.) College, Panipat. Her professional career encompasses significant research and industry roles, including Senior Scientific Manager (Team Leader) at Aragen Life Sciences, Hyderabad, Telangana, India from September 2022 to May 2023; Senior Research Investigator S2 BBRC at Syngene International Limited, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India from September 2020 to August 2022; Marie-Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany from August 2017 to August 2020; and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion, Israel from December 2016 to July 2017.

Dr. Rani's research specializations include the development of new catalytic methods for the selective synthesis of heterocyclic compounds, selective C–F functionalization of trifluoromethylarenes, and total synthesis of bioactive natural products and bio-functional compounds to understand biological phenomena. She currently supervises doctoral scholars Mr. Vaibhav Bhaskar Yadav, Mr. Siddhant Kale, and Mr. Rushikesh Kusmude. Her major awards and fellowships comprise the Bravo award from Bristol Myers Squibb USA in 2021, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral funding from the European Union H2020 in 2020, Eli Lilly and Company Asia Outstanding Thesis Award from the National Organic Symposium Trust Council, India in 2016, Senior Research Fellowship from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research India in 2015, and UGC-CSIR NET from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research India in 2011. Key publications include "Defluorinative Approach for the Synthesis of Chromones via [4 + 2] Annulation of Difluoro Quinone Methide" (Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2025), "C–F Bond Functionalization: Controlled Didefluorination of o-Trifluoromethyl Benzylamines" (Organic Letters, 2025), "Enantioselective Total Synthesis of the Morphogen (−)-Thallusin and Mediated Uptake of Fe(III) into the Green Seaweed Ulva" (Chemistry - A European Journal, 2024), "Isolation, (bio)synthetic studies and evaluation of antimicrobial properties of drimenol-type sesquiterpenes of Termitomyces fungi" (Communications Chemistry, 2023), "Thallusin Quantification in Marine Bacteria and Algae Cultures" (Marine Drugs, 2022), "Stereoselective Total Synthesis of (−)-Thallusin for Bioactivity Profiling" (Angewandte Chemie - International Edition, 2022), and "One-Pot Trimetallic Relay Catalysis: A Unified Approach for the Synthesis of β-Carbolines and Other [c]-Fused Pyridines" (Angewandte Chemie - International Edition, 2016).