Sankha Pattanayak

Sankha Pattanayak is an accomplished chemist currently serving as the Director of Chemistry for Genetic Medicine at Eli Lilly and Company, where involvement includes the development of oligonucleotide-based therapeutics. Previous roles include Senior Director of Chemistry and Director of Chemistry at Creyon Bio, focused on engineering safe oligonucleotide-based medicines. Sankha held the position of Principal Investigator at Syngene International Limited, co-leading an oligonucleotide process development lab and developing scalable manufacturing processes for therapeutic oligonucleotides. Academic experience includes research scientist and postdoctoral researcher positions at Stanford University School of Medicine, contributing to optogenetic systems and oligonucleotide tools. A staff scientist role at Click Nucleic Acids, Inc. involved commercializing innovative nucleic acid technologies. Educational qualifications comprise a PhD in Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology from Jadavpur University, along with postdoctoral trainings from Stanford University and the University of Colorado Boulder.