Dr. Venkata Madhavi Yaddanapudi brings over eighteen years of post-PhD experience. With 5 plus years of industrial experience in API process R&D at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, IPDO, she joined NIPER, Hyderabad in the Process Chemistry department which is a part of Chemical Sciences now. She did her doctoral studies at Indian Institute of Chemical Technology(IICT), Tarnaka, Hyderabad. She also has Six Sigma green belt certification, a post graduate diploma in statistical quality control from Indian Statistical Institute and a PG Diploma in Patents Law She teaches courses like Logic in organic synthesis, Industrial Process and Scale up techniques, Stereochemistry and Drug action, Synthetic Aspects of Process Chemistry, Synthetic Bulk drug technologies and takes general laboratory sessions. Seven students have been awarded PhD in her guidance and five are pursuing at present. She has also guided more than forty MS students in their dissertation works. Many of them are pursuing higher studies and others are in good positions in various pharmaceutical industries. Her research interests include, “Structure based drug design and synthesis of new anti-microbial agents”, with particular focus on tackling the AMR problem in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Her research group has two granted patents in the development of NCE’s for Tuberculosis and more than 95 publications in international peer reviewed journals. Her group is also involved in development of cost effective synthetic routes for API’s and API intermediates and novel sustainable and green methodologies.
Dr. Chandraiah Godugu, Associate Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
Dr. Godugu's area of research interests are Nanotoxicology studies of Nanoparticles used in Drug Delivery and other Biomedical applications, In vitro and In vivo Genotoxicological evaluation of Nanoparticles and Novel Drug Delivery Systems, The potential novel Treatment and Chemopreventive approaches with special emphasis on Ancient Indian Herbal medicine for management of Cancer and Diabetes.
Prof. Saurabh Srivastava, Professor
Department of Pharmaceutics
Dr. Saurabh Srivastava earned his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from “Panjab University, Chandigarh” and pursued his Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences from “Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan. He carries more than 17+ years of profound industrial and research experience working with several Pharmaceutical R&Ds, including IPCA labs, Mumbai, Wockhardt research centre, Aurangabad and His latest stint was with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad, as Tech Lead for development and commercialization of various Differentiated, NDA and ANDA based products for different regulated markets.
Subsequently, he joined as an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics, NIPER-Hyderabad. Presently he is acting as a Member (Board of Governors; NIPER-Hyderabad), Member (Board of Directors; AVISHKARAN-BIRAC-BioNEST of NIPER Hyderabad) and Head, Department of Regulatory Affairs (Add’l Charge) at NIPER Hyderabad. His Research Laboratory named Pharmaceutical Innovation and Translational Research Lab (PITRL) is predominantly working on the development and optimization of Industrially viable, feasible and scalable Differentiated formulations; (505(b)2, through the utilization of Micro/Nanostructured Targeted drug deliveries along with Novel platform technologies. His major therapeutic area of research is Diabetic Complications, Neurodegenerative disorders, Dermal diseases, Glioblastoma, Melanoma, Prostate, Breast Cancer and Oral Cancer.
He has mentored 40+ Masters Research scholars, and 11 PhD Research scholars are pursuing their Doctoral research, whereas, 04 PhD Scholars have already submitted their PhD under his supervision. He and his research team are actively involved in the execution of several Extra Mural Research (EMR) Projects and Industrial research projects (~1.5 CR.) to establish novel differentiated products. He has been awarded several appreciation and “Special Recognition Awards” from Dr. Reddy’s laboratories for his outstanding contribution to research and development along with the International Travel grant from CSIR, New Delhi. He was further elected as a Fellow of the Prestigious “Telangana Academy of Sciences” (TAS) in May 2024 and Fellow of “Education Research & Development Association” (ERDA) in November 2024. He had been instrumental in 02 “Commercial Products”, 17+ “International and National Patents”, 04 Edited books, 50+ Book chapters along with 200+ Publications in Journals of International repute with h-Index of 31 and 4000+ citations further to his credit.
Prof. Amit Awasthi, Professor
Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis
Dr. Asthana has more than 21 years of post-doctoral experience in the field of biomaterials, micro/nanotechnology, microfluidics device designing, fabrication and characterization, hot embossing, cleanroom operations, and paper-microfluidics. He has worked at Institutes and Universities of International fame such as the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Institute Curie, France; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA; Chungnam National University, South Korea; and University of Queensland, Australia.
Dr. Asthana is a Fellow of the Telangana Academy of Science. He is the recipient of many fellowships including S.R.F. (C.S.I.R., India), Curie Fellowship (France), Brainpool Fellowship (KRF, South Korea), and Ramalingaswami Return Fellowship (DBT, India) . Dr. Asthana has many publications in journals of international repute and international conferences apart from 04 Indian and PCT patents.
His research interests include paper-based microfluidic devices and their applications in clinical diagnosis, 3D cell culture, drug screening, and other biomedical applications. His group is also working on the application of 3D bioprinting, biomaterials, micro/nanofabrication, digital microfluidics, a wide range of microfluidic applications such as nanoparticle generation, and generation of drug delivery vesicles apart from non-conventional ways of fabricating microfluidic devices.
Dr. Asthana has been instrumental in establishing PAHL BioNanoTherapeutics Pvt. Limited, a startup established with funding from BIRAC under Bio-Initiative Grant (BIG) at IKP Park, Hyderabad. Moreover, he is associated with many start-ups working on affordable diagnostic and medical device companies in India as a scientific advisor, such as FastSense Diagnostics (Pune, India) and Microfluidic Paper Medical Devices Pvt. Ltd (Hyderabad, India). He is also the chief scientific advisor for ChitoLytic Diagnostics, Canada.
Dr. Chandraiah Godugu, Associate Professor
Department of Regulatory Affairs
Dr. Godugu's area of research interests are Nanotoxicology studies of Nanoparticles used in Drug Delivery and other Biomedical applications, In vitro and In vivo Genotoxicological evaluation of Nanoparticles and Novel Drug Delivery Systems, The potential novel Treatment and Chemopreventive approaches with special emphasis on Ancient Indian Herbal medicine for management of Cancer and Diabetes.
Dr. N. Rajesh Kumar, Assistant Professor
Department of Pharmaceutical Management
A pharmacist and seasoned professional with extensive experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, as a founder faculty member of the MBA Pharma Management programme at both NIPER Hyderabad and NIPER Ahmedabad, Dr N. Rajesh Kumar has demonstrated a profound commitment to shaping the next generation of pharmaceutical leaders.
Dr N Rajesh Kumar's research interests are centered on developing business cases for pharmaceutical and healthcare products. His work involves both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, with a specific focus on addressing key challenges and opportunities within the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. Vasundhra Bhandari, Assistant Professor
Department of Pharmacoinformatics and Department of Biopharmaceuticals
Pharmacogenomics and Precision Medicine, Antimicrobial Resistance and Drug discovery
Dr. Bhandari’s group is interested in new drug discovery, repurposing of drugs and understanding their novel mechanism of resistance. Her group is also interested to identify the interindividual variability against a treatment or drug deciphering a path to precision medicine. During her PhD and Postdoctoral work, she has identified novel drug targets and worked towards identifying the drug resistance mechanism operative in important human pathogens. Her lab is well funded with extramural grant support from government and private agencies.
At NIPER, she intends to use functional genomics/proteomics, epigenetics and gene editing tools for answering her research questions.
Dr. Janani Radhakrishnan, Assistant Professor
Department of Medical Devices
Dr. Janani Radhakrishnan’s research focus on biofabrication of tissue-mimetic preformed and injectable polymeric scaffolds for regenerative medicine and 3D organotypic models. Her interest includes tissue engineered scaffolds particularly, injectable hydrogels, spatially varying gradient hydrogels, pneumatic based 3D bioprinted constructs, random / aligned / core-shell electrospun nanofibers, protein nanoparticles, SPIONs, nanomicellar and nanotheranostic systems. The developed biomaterials are characterized, investigated in vitro using cells / stem cells and in vivo regenerative potential assessed in rat / rabbit models. In addition, the potential of mesenchymal stem cells will be explored by integrating with developed artificial matrices.
Dr. Raghu Gogada, Associate Professor
Department of BioPharmaceuticals
His area of research is to identify and develop specific methodologies and technologies that help in mitochondria-based drug discovery, discovering relevant therapeutic peptides for specific diseases using in silico tolls, uncovering new chemical entities (NCEs) while screening through in vitro and in vivo assay systems and cancer genomics vis-à-vis cancer (i.e. prostate and breast) and neurodegenerative (i.e. Alzheimer’s), and viral diseases..
