Balkaran Singh Sran obtained his bachelor’s degree in Non-Medical Sciences from SCD Government College, affiliated with Panjab University, Chandigarh, India (2013), and Master of Science (M.Sc. Hons.) in Chemistry at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India (2015).
He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2021 from the Guru Nanak Dev University under the supervision of Prof. Geeta Hundal, focusing on structural and opto-magnetic investigation of lanthanide coordination complexes and polymers.
During his PhD, he was awarded the prestigious Raman Charpak Fellowship, which allowed him to conduct research in France under supervision of Prof. Olivier Cador. There, he synthesized macrocyclic ligands and utilized to produce lanthanides based single-molecule magnets.
After completing his Ph.D., Balkaran served as a Lecturer at the same university, teaching materials chemistry courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students. He then carried out a two-year postdoctoral stay in South Korea at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) in Daejeon, working with the research groups of Prof. U-Hwang Lee and Prof. Su-Kyung Lee.
His research focused on the development of porous materials, particularly metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), for gas capture and separation applications. To date, Balkaran has published 27 research papers in reputed international journals.
In 2024, Balkaran joined the MemCat project as a Postdoctoral Researcher. He is part of the team led by Dr. Laura Salonen at CINBIO, University of Vigo (UVIGO), Spain. His role in the MemCat project involves developing nanofillers to be used in membrane preparation for efficient ethylene purification. Additionally, Balkaran collaborates with project partners to address material-related challenges encountered during membrane synthesis.