The Department of Chemistry, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus hosted an “International Conference on Aggregation-Induced Emission from Fundamental to Applications (ICAIEFA 2022)”. The three days of deliberation with internationally eminent speakers from the USA, Japan, Canada, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Australia, Italy, South Korea, and nationally distinguished speakers from BARC, IIT Bombay, IIT Indore, Goa University, IISER Kolkata, IISER Bhopal, CDRI Lucknow, NISER Bhubaneswar, University of Calcutta, University of Delhi, Guru Nanak Dev University, BITS Pilani, other campuses, etc. was held from 16th to 18th Dec.

 

The conference was inaugurated by the invocation song, Lord Vinayak vandana followed by the lighting of lamps by dignitaries including the chief guest, Dr. Gopal Mugeraya - Director of NIT Goa; guest of honor Dr. Bhanu Manjunath, Director, Syngenta Goa; Prof. Suman Kundu, Director of BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus; HoD Chemistry and chairs of the conference. All inaugural speeches touched upon the importance of the AIE field and the need for translational research. The Chief Guest Dr. Mugeraya reminded the dream of Late Manohar Parrikar of making Goa a hub of education and cutting-edge research. Prof. Kundu further underscored the importance of bridging academia with industry for AIE-based technologies in India.

 

This hybrid event is the first conference organized in India on Aggregation-Induced Emission (AIE) fields, which is ranked at the top of the 10 emerging technologies in chemistry by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in 2020. AIE refers to the property of certain organic molecules to show intense luminescence when aggregated, which has shown remarkable progress from fundamentals to translational research in the areas of bioimaging, sensing, therapeutics and theranostics, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, etc. There were several POSTER and ORAL presentation awards for budding researchers from the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the organizers. It ended with a resolution of future editions of this type of conference in India.