Thalappil Pradeep is an institute professor and professor of chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He is also the Deepak Parekh Chair Professor. In 2020 he received the Padma Shri award for his distinguished work in the field of Science and Technology. He has received the Nikkei Asia Prize (2020), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) prize (2018), and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2008 by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Early life Pradeep was born on July 8, 1963, at Panthavoor, Kerala, India, to (late) Thalappil Narayanan Nair and Pulakkat Panampattavalappil Kunjilakshmi Amma. Both his parents were school teachers. His father was a writer too, with the pen name N. N. Thalappil, who authored 14 books in Malayalam. Pradeep was educated in government schools all through. From 5th to 10th, he was educated at the Govt. High School, Mookkuthala where his father taught Malayalam and mother taught social studies. The school was built by Shri. Pakaravoor Chitran Namboothiripad, who donated it to the Government at a token price of Rs. 1. Most of the days he walked the 4 km trip to the school, as most of his classmates. Later, he was educated at the MES College, Ponnani for his Pre Degree, St. Thomas College, Thrissur for his BSc and Farook College, Kozhikode for his MSc, all under Calicut University. Early research Pradeep earned a PhD degree in chemical physics working with Professors C. N. R. Rao and M. S. Hegde at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore during 1986–91. Subsequently, he spent about two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley with Prof. David A. Shirley and Purdue University, Indiana with Prof. R. Graham Cooks. Since then, he has been working at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where he is an institute professor. He held visiting positions at Purdue University, Leiden University, in the Netherlands, EPFL, Switzerland, the Institute of Chemistry, Taiwan, Pohang University of Science and Technology, South Korea and the University of Hyogo, Japan. Current research and research group Pradeep's work is in the area of molecular materials and surfaces. The materials and phenomena he discovered have implications to clean environment, affordable clean water and ultrasensitive devices. Some of his discoveries have been translated to viable products and several of his recent findings have immense scope for the