Sanjay Agarwalla

Sanjay Agarwalla is currently the Director of Biochemistry at Blacksmith Medicines, a position they have held since 2021. Prior to this, they held the same role at Molecular Assemblies, Inc. from 2017 to 2021. From 2004 to 2017, they were a Research Investigator I/II and Investigator III at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, where they were the Protein Science lead on several pre-clinical drug discovery programs. Sanjay's role involved proposing unique approaches for biological discovery, generating protein reagents and conducting biochemical experiments. Sanjay also set up a proteomics based core platform for identifying protein-protein interactions and chemoproteomics for identifying protein targets of small molecules drugs. From 2000 to 2004, they were a Post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, where they conducted detailed enzymology of a RNA methyltransferase. Sanjay determined functions of the key catalytic residues of the enzyme and that of the substrate RNA, and determined atomic structure of the RNA-Protein complex in collaboration with a structural biologist. From 1996 to 2000, they were the Founder and Owner of Synthon Chemicals.

Sanjay Agarwalla received their Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 1994. Prior to that, they obtained their Master of Science (M.Sc.) from Savitribai Phule Pune University.