Prof. Dr. A. Ajayaghosh is  CSIR Outstanding Scientist at the NIIST and Dean and Professor at AcSIR, CSIR and Adjunct Professor, Material Science Programme, IIT, Kanpur. After his education at University of Kerala and University of Calicut, he earned a PhD from  the University of Calicut under the mentorship of Prof. V. N. Rajasekharan Pillai, Subsequently in 1988, he started his research career at NIIST (the then RRL, Trivandrum). His honors and awards include the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry, Fellowship of Indian Academy of Sciences, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, Outstanding Researcher Award, Dept. of Atomic Energy; Thomson Reuters Research Excellence-India Research Front Award, Fellowship of the National Academy of Sciences Allahabad, Fellowship of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi,  A. V. Rama Rao Foundation Award Lecture of JNCASR, Bangalore, R. A. Mashelkar Endowment Award, NCL Pune,  CRSI Bronze and Silver Medals, Swarnajayanti Research Grant of DST, Khwarizmi International Award by Iranian Organisation for Science and Technology, Swadeshi Innovation Award by the Swadeshi Science Movement, Kerala, TWAS Chemistry Prize by The World Academy of Sciences, Trieste, Italy and Infosys Prize.  He has been an INSA-JSPS Exchange Fellow at Chiba University, Japan, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Max-Planck-Institut für Strahlenchemie, Germany, a DST-DAAD Exchange Fellow at University of Regensburg, Germany, an INSA-JSPS Exchange Fellow at AIST Tsukuba, Japan, a Council Member of Indo-French Centre for Promotion of Sciences, Member of Research Council, North East Institute of Science and Technology, Member of Research Council, NCL, Pune and a Ramanna Fellow, DST. His current research interests are organogels with diverse shapes, sizes, and properties; excited-state properties and energy transfer in molecular assemblies and gels; helical assemblies; conducting gels; organic-inorganic hybrid assemblies; photoresponsive systems; molecular probes. He is a life member of Chemical Research Society of India, Materials Research Society of India and the President, Society for Polymer Science, India Trivandrum chapter.