Shankar Venkatraman

Shankar Venkatraman has over 30 years of work experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Shankar began their career as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota in 1987. From 1996 to 2001, they worked as a Sr. Scientist at Celera/Axys Pharmaceuticals, where they designed and synthesized new scaffolds suitable for lead optimization, interacted closely with Modeling and Biology groups to address project related issues, and supervised four direct reports. From 2001 to 2009, they worked at Merck as a Sr. Research Fellow, where they identified a novel scaffold in the HIV-Integrase program, supervised four direct reports, and interacted with Biologists, DMPK and Pharmacologists. From 2009 to 2017, they worked at Vitae Pharmaceuticals as a Director, where they utilized structure based drug design (SBDD) to deliver development candidates for Oncology and Alzheimer (BACE1) programs, identified key leads for CD73 (an onco-immunology target), and addressed various medical issues. Shankar has been an Executive Director at IFM Therapeutics since 2017.

Shankar Venkatraman has a post-doctoral experience from The University of Kansas from 1995 to 1996. Shankar also obtained a Ph.D in chemistry from the University of Minnesota from 1988 to 1992. Additionally, they have a QA RA regulatory certification from Temple University.