Dr. Paresh Kumar Samantaray obtained his BTech in plastics engineering in 2014 from the Central Institute of Petrochemicals Engineering and Technology (CIPET), Bhubaneswar, where he was the topper of his batch. After briefly working at ALPLA India Pvt. Ltd., he joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, in 2015 for his PhD. During his doctoral research, he synthesized new multilayered membranes by integrating antibacterial polymers, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and 2D materials for environmental remediation. Being an environmental enthusiast, Dr. Samantaray was a student delegate at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, a global event on sustainability, and the World Sustainable Development Summit organized by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

Dr. Samantaray’s innovation on sustainable purification device was accoladed at the Innovation Fest 2017 in Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bengaluru. On the National Science Day of 2019, he held a scientific workshop at Acharya Guruparampara Vidyalaya, Tumkur. In 2017 and 2018, he also volunteered for two Indian National Science Academy science camps. He has also been a judge at three science conclaves for school children.

Under the Fulbright-Nehru postdoctoral program at Caltech, he is designing low-cost porous membranes immobilized with environmentally benign microbes for the selective capture of toxic selenium derivatives from aquifers. His project not only has scientific importance but also significant societal and economic relevance.