The Department of Organic Chemistry was established in the year 1911, one of the earliest Departments of the Institute.  More than a century old now, the Department has a very vibrant and rich tradition to intense academic and basic research programmes.  With organic chemistry as the main theme, the research activities of the Department continuously strive to embrace not only deeper insights into organic reactions, methodologies, target-driven syntheses of natural and un-natural molecules and products, but also traversing through interfacial areas of chemical, biological and materials significance, where organic chemistry principles have a lot to address and offer.  Past couple of decades of expansion of research areas in the Department has laid a strong foundation to embark and expand horizons of organic chemistry, as applicable to chemical biology and materials chemistry.