Nibedita Rath

Dr Nibedita Rath is Working as Scientific Director in Open Source Pharma Foundation (OSPF). She has more than eighteen years of research experience both in industry and academia in chemistry, biology and drug discovery. She has trained at premier research organizations such as the Chemical Sciences Division, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (UPENN) during the early part of her research career. She is an accomplished scientist in chemistry and biology, which has helped her take up leadership and strategic roles in drug discovery, starting from establishing a state of the art biochemical screening facility in a biotech company and nurturing a group of young scientists focused on delivery. Her drug discovery experience spans projects strategy, chemical synthesis, in vitro biochemical and phenotypic screening, structure-activity relationship (SAR) analyses and medicinal chemistry design. She has worked in multiple disease areas such as metabolic disorder, oncology and infection. As a functional head in a biotech company in Bangalore, she had established two teams - synthetic organic chemistry and biochemical screening. During this period, her significant contributions include taking a nutraceutical from bench to market as a food supplement and design and execution of hepatotoxicity model for a client. In the current role, she leads several scientific programmes in OSPF, such as knowledgebase and knowledge graph for tuberculosis (Project funded by Wellcome Trust), drug repurposing, distributed network of drug discovery, neutralizing antibody for Covid19, clinical trial to name a few. Additionally, she leads the effort to develop and explore new strategic partnerships and manage communications and initiatives with OSPF key partners. She is a firm believer in a leadership style that empowers people to bring out their best abilities to drive business success by providing high energy, a motivational environment that nurtures collaboration, equality at work, transparency in communication and a positive attitude to drive high performance.

Barriers that prevent equitable and effective access to medicines limit the system’s capacity to address health issues. Nearly 2 billion people have no access to essential medicines, causing a torrent of preventable misery and suffering. Involvement of patient groups across the entire drug discovery process to development to approval to marketing would be a win-win situation for everyone.

She has more than eighteen years of research experience both in industry and academia in chemistry, biology and drug discovery. She has trained at premier research organizations such as the Chemical Sciences Division, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (UPENN) during the early part of her research career. She is an accomplished scientist in chemistry and biology, which has helped her take up leadership and strategic roles in drug discovery, starting from establishing a state of the art biochemical screening facility in a biotech company and nurturing a group of young scientists focused on delivery. Her drug discovery experience spans projects strategy, chemical synthesis, in vitro biochemical and phenotypic screening, structure-activity relationship (SAR) analyses and medicinal chemistry design. She has worked in multiple disease areas such as metabolic disorder, oncology and infection.