Coordinator: Dean's Office
Elective Course
Course Instructor: Dr. Shweta Naik
Course Day and Time: Tuesday and Friday (2 PM to 4 PM)
Starting from January 13, 2026
Coordinator: Dean's Office
Required Course
Instructor(s): Dr. Mayuri Rege, Dr. Mashood K. K., and Prof. Arnab Bhattacharya
Course Day and Time: Tuesday and Thursday (10 AM to 12 Noon)
Starting from January 20, 2026
03Tue
Coordinator: Dean's Office
Dr. Shahila Muhammed
Dr. Shahila Muhammed obtained her master's in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) in 2013. Her MSc dissertation, titled "Tandem mass spectrometric studies of gold and silver thiolates", was carried out under the guidance of Prof. T Pradeep at the DST unit of nanoscience, IIT Madras, where she acquired training in employing sensitive tandem mass spectrometric methods for molecular structural investigation. During the next three years (2014 January - 2017 January), she worked as a junior research fellow at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune (IISER Pune). At IISER Pune, she worked in the biophotonics laboratory with Dr. Mrinalini Puranik, and in the Chemical Origins of Life Lab with Dr. Sudha Rajamani. The projects on substrate recognition of DNA repair proteins and the photophysics of modified nucleobases from the origins of life perspective provided her with thorough training in vibrational spectroscopy. A transition from experimental research to theoretical chemistry research brought her to the current position. She enrolled in the PhD program in chemistry at the National Institute of Technology Calicut (NIT Calicut) in December 2017. She worked with Prof. Parameswaran Pattiyil (Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Lab, NITC) on the thesis titled "Role of Hyperconjugation in Dictating the Molecular Geometry and Reactivity of Low-valent Group-15 Compounds". Her studies explored the electronic structure, chemical bonding, and reactivity of several group-15 compounds where pseudo-multiple bonding is present. She defended her PhD thesis in November 2024. While at NITC, her research produced several publications in reputable, peer-reviewed international journals.
Understanding Chemistry through Heuristic Chemical Bonding Models
Heuristic models are indispensable to the growth of chemistry and are excellent candidates that help to categorise the huge amount of structural and spectroscopic data collected over centuries. Although these models lack a direct one-to-one correspondence with the underlying physical reality and often appear as fuzzy concepts to non-chemists, they are essential to manipulate the material world. Design and synthesis of new molecules are inevitably influenced by the depth of chemical intuition built upon exposing ourselves to these models and categorisation schemes. Importantly, the extensive symbolism used in chemistry to represent structures, reaction mechanisms, etc., is rooted in models. Molecules being intrinsically delocalized quantum objects, the second-order electron delocalisation is dealt with two prime concepts in chemistry – conjugation and hyperconjugation. The first part of the talk will discuss the concepts of hyperconjugation, bonds formed through hyperconjugation (pseudo-bonds) and pseudo-π-delocalisation with recent examples from main-group chemistry. The second part of the talk will present ideas for enhancing the teaching and learning of quantum chemical models in undergraduate courses. This discussion will address the inclusion of philosophical and historical accounts of the development of quantum chemical models, strategies for improving mechanistic reasoning in organic chemistry, and approaches to strengthen students’ understanding of bonding and molecular structure through hands-on experience with computer-aided visualization and simulation tools.