Dr. K. C. Dash joined the Department on 25 September, 1968 as a Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry. Prior to that, he was a lecturer in the Regional College of Engineering, Rourkela (16-07-1963 to 24-04-1968) and during that period he carried out research under Prof. D. V. R. Rao in the area of synthetic Inorganic chemistry. He was awarded Ph. D. degree of Sambalpur University in the year 1967 and later on working in the related area of Inorganic Synthesis he was awarded D. Sc. degree from Utkal University (1982). He joined as Reader on 12-10-1976 and Professor on 12- 03-1985. He pursued advanced research in Inorganic Chemistry in the University of Wurzburg, West Germany availing a DAAD post doctoral fellowship (1971 1973), as :
- a Senior Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Technical University of Munich, Munich, West Germany (1979-1980),
- visiting Scientist at the University of
Cambridge, UK (AvH Fellow) (1980-1981), - visiting Scientist at Technical University, Munich (FRG) (1986),
- visiting Scientist at the University of Lund, Sweden (1987), and
- Fulbright Fellow at Indiana Univ. Bloomington and Univ. of Delaware, USA (1990).
He has published 159 papers. During his stay in Germany he published two review articles co-authored with his Postdoc mentor, Professor H. Schmidbaur (H. Schmidbaur & K.C. Dash “Compounds of Gold in Unusual Oxidation States” in ‘ADVANCES IN INORGANIC CHEMISTRY & RADIOCHEMISTRY’ (eds. H.J. Emeleus & A.G. Sharpe), Academic Press, New York, vol. 25, p. 239 (1982). – “Gold Compounds as Metallo Drugs” K.C. Dash & H. Schmidbaur in ‘METAL IONS IN BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS’ (Ed. H. Sigel), Marcel Dekker, New York, vol. 14, p. 179 (1982). He was awarded Prof. Priyadaranjan Ray Memorial Medal & Prize of the Indian Chemical Society (1990), Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray Memorial Medal & Prize of the Indian Chemical Society (1993), and the Samanta Chandra Sekhar Award of the year (1993) on 20, January 1996 of Orissa Bigyan Academy. 17 candidates have been awarded Ph. D. degrees under his supervision. He was the Head of the Department during 1990-1992 and was very keen in maintaining the garden in front of the department. He retired in the year 2003. His untimely death is a great loss to the Department and to the Chemistry Community at large.