Assist. Prof. Dr. Kiranmai Nayani | Chemistry | Research Excellence Award

CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) | India

Dr. Kiranmai Nayani is an accomplished synthetic organic chemist with extensive research experience in peptide chemistry, asymmetric catalysis, natural product synthesis, and process development for pharmaceutically relevant molecules. She earned her Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from CSIR–IICT, Hyderabad (2005–2010) under the supervision of Dr. Srivari Chandrasekhar, receiving the prestigious Eli Lilly Asia Outstanding Thesis Award (2010). She holds an M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry with Gold Medal from NIT Warangal, a B.Ed. (Institute Topper), and a B.Sc. with Distinction. Dr. Kiranmai currently serves as Senior Scientist at CSIR-IICT, following earlier roles including Project Scientist-III, WOS-A Principal Investigator (DST), Senior Research Associate (CSIR Pool Scientist), Postdoctoral Fellow at Université Paris Descartes (France), and industry positions at Chemveda Life Sciences, Sai Advantium Pharma, and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories. Her research contributions span organic synthesis, asymmetric dearomatization, foldamers, peptidomimetics, functional peptides, radical cascade reactions, Piancatelli rearrangements, and late-stage functionalization. She has significantly contributed to the synthesis of antimicrobial peptides, including scalable routes to TLR7/8 agonists used as adjuvants in Covaxin, the antiviral drug Nirmatrelvir, and peptide drugs like Dalargin and Plitidepsin.

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