Dr. Balaram S. Takale received Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Mumbai, India, in 2012. He then joined the group of Professor Yoshinori Yamamoto at Tohoku University, Japan, and Dalian University of Technology, China, as a postdoc. After spending two years in the group of Professor Yamamoto, he joined Pfizer R&D in India and came to work as a postdoc in 2017 in the group of Professor Bruce Lipshutz, at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), USA. His research at UCSB included the development of efficient Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions with special emphasis on pharmaceutical process chemistry. In April 2021, he joined as a scientist in the process chemistry-chemical development division of Neurocrine Bioscience.