Kallol Ray is a Heisenberg Full Professor of Inorganic Spectroscopy and Reaction Mechanism. He performed his studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India and his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Karl Wieghardt in Germany. He spent two years as a post-doc with Prof. Lawrence Que at the university of Minnesota, USA. Current research in his group encompasses synthetic bioinorganic and organometallic chemistry. He applies a combination of synthesis, spectroscopy and computational methods in order to obtain vital insights into the prerequisites necessary for the design of efficient catalysts for the selective functionalization of unactivated C–H bonds (like methane), O2 reduction and water oxidation by using cheap and readily available first-row transition metals under ambient conditions. His research activities have been recognized by various awards: for example the EuroBic Medal (2020), Ernst–Haage National Award (MPI of Chemical Energy Conversion, Mülheim/Ruhr, 2012) in the field of bioinorganic chemistry and catalysis, the Wöhler–EurJIC Young Investigator Prize (2013), and the Carl Duisberg Memorial Award of the GDCh (2015).