Dr. Ankur Maji is an experimental inorganic and organometallic chemist with research expertise in homogeneous catalysis, earth-abundant metal chemistry, and nanomaterial-based heterogeneous catalysis. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry, IIT Roorkee (2014), where he worked on organometallic synthesis and catalysis. He then held postdoctoral positions at IIT Kanpur — as an Institute Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Sabuj Kundu, working on Mn-catalyzed hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions — and at POSTECH, South Korea, with Prof. In Su Lee, where he investigated nanospace-confined heterogeneous catalysis and H₂/CO activation. He is currently Associate Professor of Chemistry and Associate Dean (Research Grants & Consultancy) at SR University, Warangal.

His research focuses on the design and application of phosphine-free, nitrogen-donor ligand frameworks with earth-abundant metals — particularly cobalt and manganese — for sustainable organic transformations. His group develops catalyst systems for transfer hydrogenation, multicomponent synthesis of functionalized nitrogen heterocycles such as hydrazones and dihydropyrazoles, and explores metal–organic frameworks as heterogeneous platforms for organic catalysis. Alongside this, his work examines how ligand–substrate interactions at metal centers in nanomaterials govern catalytic selectivity and activity. He has published [36] peer-reviewed papers (h-index 12) in journals including JACS, Angew, ACS Nano, Organometallic, JOC. Much of this work has grown from close collaborations with synthetic and spectroscopic groups, bridging molecular catalyst design with mechanistic understanding.