Faculty Profiles: Digambara Patra

Professor Digambara Patra

The Chemistry Department welcomed Assistant Professor Digambara Patra in September 2007 as a member of the AUB faculty and as a person with enormous expertise in the fields of experimental physical chemistry and applied spectroscopy and in general chemistry as well.

Patra chose AUB for his first experience in the Middle East especially because "it is one of the best universities in the region. Also, because the Chemistry Department is well known for its high educational standards and valuable research." Having spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow in Switzerland (2001-02), two years as a research fellow in Germany (2002-04) , and another three years of research in Japan (2004-07), Patra felt that Lebanon would provide a welcome change as a culture totally different from Japan or Western Europe.

"I think life here is more similar to home," explained Patra, who was schooled in India, his homeland, where he obtained two MS degrees in chemistry with distinction and a PHD in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Patra did some teaching in India, as well, while studying, and he finds AUB students to be "very competent, competitive, smart, cooperative, and eager to learn."

With one book, Chemical and Biochemical Fluorescence Sensors, almost eighty articles in professional journals, five scholarly papers and twelve conference publications, Patra is more than extensively published. A holder of numerous academic honors and research awards, Patra is confidently pursuing his research on nanoscopic chemistry, probe chemistry, and fluorescence sensing at AUB. He is pleased to find the core lab well-equipped, has started establishing his own lab, and hopes to prepare it for laser-based techniques in probing.

When away from his research and academic work, Patra likes to write articles and compose Indian poetry. He likes chemistry, because it is similar to design as it tackles building matter at the molecular scale. While a student at university, he was involved with drama, and he still finds great solace in the arts as a wonderful means of recharging himself for the technical and scientific demands of his profession.