Dr. B. Ranganathan, Associate Professor at the department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Amrita School of Pharmacy, Kochi was conferred with the APP Young Achiever Award during the Fourth Annual National Convention of the Association of Pharmacy Professionals (APP) held on January 31, 2015 at Invertis University, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. He was honouredwith the award which recognized his contribution in spreading the aura of chemistry among students in India after gaining postdoctoral research experience at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, United States of America.  

This event themed “Industry Participation in Academic Intervention: Need for Overall Upgradation of Pharmacy Profession”, was attended by about three hundred delegates across the nation. The program was comprised of five technical sessions (including an Indo-Nepal symposium) where a dozen speakers shared their expertise.

In his part, Dr. Ranganathan delivered a lecture titled “Medicinal Chemist’s Perspective of Molecular Modeling” as part of the workshop- Drug Design Strategies: Computational Techniques and Applications. His lecture was presented with a strong industrial flavor and portrayed how the field of computational chemistry in general, and molecular modeling in particular, has served the drug discovery endeavor. He went on to explain the utility of such tools in the practice of medicinal chemistry and highlighted the success stories of various modes of drug design while urging the audience to exercise caution in interpreting the results of these applications.

Coming from a traditionally trained bench chemist, Dr. Ranganathan’s inaugural lecture in this workshop set the tone for more detailed talks focusing on topics such as pharmacophore mapping, quantitative structure activity relationships and molecular docking that followed. During the valedictory function of the event, Dr. Ranganathan was conferred with the prestigious APP Young Achiever Award.