On October 9, 2026, we had the pleasure of welcoming two BIG-NSE alumni at our office: Dr. Avijit Roy and Dr. Shweta Kalra, both members of the WS18 batch.
Avijit completed his PhD in April 2022 in the group of Prof. Martin Oestreich at TU Berlin. His thesis dealt with the synthesis of donor-stabilized bis(silylium) ions and silylium-ion-promoted organic transformations. He then spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Hajime Ito at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, before moving into industry as a senior scientist in process chemistry at Pharmaron in the UK. Since November 2025, he has been working as a Process Engineer at Symeres in Weert, the Netherlands.
Shweta finished her PhD in March 2023 in the group of Prof. Matthias Driess, with a thesis on spatially well-defined silylene transition-metal complexes in selective catalysis. After a short postdoctoral stay at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim, she joined the Dow Chemical Company in Terneuzen, the Netherlands, in November 2023. There she works as a Senior Research Specialist in analytical science, applying analytical techniques to the chemistry of polymeric materials such as polyurethanes and silicones.
It was a pleasure to see both of them again and to hear first-hand how their careers have developed since leaving the program. Their paths show how broad the opportunities are for BIG-NSE graduates, from academic research abroad to process development and analytical science in the chemical industry.
Dear Avijit, dear Shweta, thank you for stopping by. We wish you all the best for the future and look forward to seeing you again soon!
