Dr. Ayan Banerjee has been working in the field of optics and spectroscopy for the last twenty four years. He obtained his PhD from IISc, Bengaluru in precision atomic spectroscopy and moved on to General Electric Global Research, Bangalore, where he worked as a Research Scientist. In 2009, he joined the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, where he is currently a Professor in the Dept of Physical Sciences. His primary research interest is in optical micromanipulation using optical tweezers, with experiments that probe diverse aspects of physics, chemistry, and biology. He has more than 40 research papers and 20 patents, and is the co-author of a text book on optics. The research of his group has been covered several times in the national medial over the last few years. He is also one of the Founder Directors of the Research Innovation and Scientific Entrepreneurship (RISE) Foundation, IISER – a non-profit company dedicated to the incubation of deep science and technology startups that has recently started activities based in IISER Kolkata. Other than that, he is also deeply involved in science communication, not only through popular talks and written articles, but also via the performing arts in the form of theatre, and writes, directs, and acts in plays with his theatre group Mukhosh.