Biographical note

Professor V.P. Gupta, born in December 30, 1942, obtained Ph.D. degree from Moscow, USSR, in 1967. He has been Professor Emeritus and also the Principal Investigator of DST Book-Writing Project under USERS (Utilization of Scientific Expertise of Retired Scientists) scheme at the University of Lucknow, Lucknow. Professor Gupta has 45 years of experience in teaching and research at several universities. He has been Professor and Chairman of the Department of Physics at the University of Jammu, Jammu-Tawi, India, a Visiting Professor of Chemistry at the Université de Provence, Marseilles, France and Professor of Physics at the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He has the distinction of being Professor Emeritus, University Grants Commission (UGC), India, and Emeritus scientist of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), India, and the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), New Delhi, India. He was a visiting scientist/fellow at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, and at International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy; and a member of several national and international academic bodies. Over the past four decades, he has successfully executed several major and minor scientific research projects granted by the national funding agencies such as Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India, New Delhi; UGC, New Delhi; CSIR, New Delhi; AICTE, New Delhi; and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Bangalore. His major areas of research are molecular spectroscopy and molecular structure, quantum chemistry, matrix isolation infrared studies, astrochemistry, and laser spectroscopy. He has to his credit 99 research publications and 3 books, including the book published by Elsevier Inc. (Waltham, United States - Academic Press), in October 2015. Dr. Ozaki received his B.Sc. in Chemistry in 1973 and PhD in Physical and Inorganic Chemistry in 1978, both from Osaka University. After over two years at the National Research Council of Canada as a research associate, he joined Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo. In 1989, he became associate professor and later full professor in the Chemistry Department at Kwansei Gakuin University until March 2018. He was a Vice President of Kwansei Gakuin University from April 2013 to March 2018. Currently Professor Ozaki is a professor emeritus of Kwansei Gakuin University. Ozaki has received many awards, including the 1998 Tomas Hirschfeld Award, 2001 EAS Award for Achievements in Near Infrared Spectroscopy, 2002 Spectroscopical Society of Japan Award, 2005 Science and Technology Award of Japanese Government, 2008 Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry Award, 2014 Bomem-Michelson Award, 2017 Chemical Society of Japan Award, and the 2018 Medal with Purple Ribbon.