Sayan was born and brought up in West Bengal, India. He completed his bachelor's and Master's in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 2015 with distinction. Thereafter, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his PhD in the group of Prof Surya Prakash and Prof George Olah, working on the Methanol Economy. Upon graduating in 2019, he moved to Israel at the Weizmann Institute of Science as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof David Milstein, working in sustainable homogeneous catalysis. In late 2021, he moved to the University of Cambridge to pursue another postdoc with Prof Erwin Reisner to develop processes for solar air-to-fuel conversion. Since 04/2025, he has been an assistant professor at the Department of Sustainable Energy Engineering at IIT Kanpur.
Sayan's academic and research career has exceptional accomplishments including six Proficiency and Excellence awards during undergraduate studies at IITK, an All India Rank (AIR) 2 in the CSIR-NET 2013 (Dec) exam and an AIR 8 in the WBJEE 2010 exam, the Weber Award from USC during PhD for outstanding graduate research, and the FGS prize from the Weizmann Institute of Science for exceptional postdoctoral achievements. He has been awarded multiple prestigious fellowships, including the Marie Curie Postdoctoral fellowship by the European Research Council (equivalent of $250,000) and the SAERI postdoctoral fellowship by the Weizmann Institute ($100,000). He has been prolific in research with 31 published articles (18 first-author) in premium journals, including Nature Energy, Nature Catalysis, Joule, JACS, ACS Catalysis, Acc. Chem. Res., which are highly cited (>3495 times, h index 26), and covered by 100+ news outlets. He has delivered talks at premier conferences, including Gordon Research Conferences, American Chemical Society conferences, Solar Fuels Networks, and NanoGe meetings.