Dr Srinivasa Reddy, Senior Principal Scientist from the Organic Chemistry Division of National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune, has been appointed as the Director of Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM), Jammu.
IIIM has a primary focus of research on drug discovery from natural products, both plant and microbial origin, enabled by biotechnology to develop technologies, drugs and products of high value for the national and international markets.
Dr Reddy is a recipient of the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize in chemical sciences and has authored more than 100 research papers in international peer-reviewed journals. He is also an inventor in 35 patents.
Dr Reddy graduated in 1991 from Osmania University and completed his master's degree in organic chemistry from the same University in 1993. He joined Prof Goverdhan Mehta's lab at the University of Hyderabad for doctoral studies and got a PhD in the year 2000. After the post-doctoral work at the laboratories of Sergey A. Kozmin of the University of Chicago and Jeffrey Aubé of University of Kansas, USA, he had worked in pharmaceutical companies based in India. He had moved to NCL in 2010 and is currently working as a Senior Principal Scientist.
Dr Reddy's group research interests are application-oriented organic synthesis, in particular, total synthesis of biologically active natural products, medicinal chemistry and crop protection. Efforts on macrocyclic natural products and silicon incorporation in known drug scaffolds with the ultimate aim of discovering drugs are the special interests of his group.
Other recognitions include CDRI Award for excellence in drug discovery research, CRSI Bronze Medal in chemical science, NASI-Reliance Industries Platinum Jubilee Award, Sun Pharma Research Award, OPPI award for contributions in pharmaceutical sciences, a fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India. He is a nominated member of the scientific body of Indian Pharmacopoeia. He also serves as an editor of Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters, an Elsevier journal.
