Jul 2015 – Oct 2025 · 10 yrs 3 mos · India

• LeadInvent Pharma Inc. (LIP), is a nanomedicine company developing therapies for Brain Cancer and other tough to treat cancers. LeadInvent Pharma's lead product GBGel combines nanotechnology and medical laser technology to bring a powerful technology to help surgeons remove brain tumor tissue that they are not able to remove using conventional surgical techniques. The founding team consists of Pharma industry veteran and seasoned entrepreneurs. LeadInvent Pharma team is backed up by a world-class advisory board. The team collectively brings over 350 man-year experience in drug development and pharma science.

Apr 2007 – Mar 2015 · 7 yrs 11 mos · New Delhi Area, India

• Pankaj was the CEO and Cofounder of LeadInvent Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Pankaj was responsible for overall business and science management at LeadInvent.
• LeadInvent Technologies was a privately-held biotech company focused on anticancer drug discovery and development of quick to market biotech products. LeadInvent was started by Pankaj along with a team of scientists from IIT Delhi Supercomputing facility, Dept. of Chemistry. LeadInvent was incubated at IIT Delhi technology incubator. LeadInvent core strength was its proprietary molecule simulation technology implemented on supercomputing platform for design and development of drug molecules. LeadInvent Tech successfully delivered drug discovery projects in oncology, neural disorder, Infective disease and metabolic disorder. LeadInvent Tech. was recognized under the DSIR certification as an R&D company and was awarded Asia Pacific Emerging Company of the Year.
• Pankaj was instrumental in forging strong academic and industrial collaborations with leading institutes such as Harvard Medical School, IIT Delhi and IIT Madras, TIFR Bombay, Delhi University, AIIMS, ICGEB and top pharma companies.

Jan 2002 – Jan 2007 · 5 yrs · New Delhi Area, India

• Pankaj was instrumental in setting up one of the biggest supercomputing facility in north India dedicated to life science research at IIT Delhi. With dual degrees in biotechnology and computer science Pankaj was instrumental in creating some of the leading molecule simulation packages for drug discovery. Pankaj played a major role in parallelization of molecule simulation software codes and custom design of cluster computing framework at IIT D.
• As one of the group leader he was instrumental in managing and coordinating scientific effort across a research team of 20 diverse researchers. Pankaj published his work in multiple international scientific journals on molecule simulations strategies. He is the author and inventor of ParDock – a novel parallel docking algorithm. Pankaj was part of the team that developed first of its kind web enabled portal for accessing supercomputing platform. The portal enabled access to the entire supercomputer resources (hardware + software) through a user friendly interface. The portal now caters to molecule simulation needs for researchers across the global (www.scfbio-iitd.res.in).
• During his tenure at IIT D. Pankaj initiated multiple collaborative programs between industry and academia. Pankaj successfully lead the collaboration between IIT Delhi and HCL Technologies exploring and creating business and research focus for both leading institutes. Pankaj also successfully lead translational drug discovery collaboration between IIT D and Dabur research foundation in the area of cancer research. Pankaj lead the collaboration between IIT D and Sun Microsystems in the field of bio computing.
• True to his entrepreneurial spirit. Pankaj along with a team of scientist from IIT Delhi spun off drug discovery venture LeadInvent Technologies. The company was incubated at Technology Business Incubation Unit at IIT D and became the first successful life science company to graduate from the technology incubation center.