Girinath G. Pillai, PhD
Computational chemist, ML practitioner, and educator. Based in Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Dr. Pillai works as a Lead Scientist at Sygnature Discovery, UK, on computational drug discovery projects. He was one of the coordinators and mentors for the Government of India's Drug Discovery Hackathon 2020.
Prior, he was a Scientific Officer at Zastra Innovations, Bengaluru, a Research Scientist at Nyro Research India, and formerly a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Molcode Ltd., Estonia. He carried out his PhD at the University of Tartu, working with Prof. Alan R. Katritzky (University of Florida) and Prof. Mati Karelson.
His expertise spans computational medicinal chemistry, ML-based SAR models, mechanistic-driven drug discovery, and molecular modelling. His drug-discovery KNIME workflows and Jupyter notebooks have attracted a global community of researchers, and he was among India's first researchers to study ageing and longevity targets.
Beyond his scientific positions, he is a mentor at AIM-IIIT Kottayam, a Mentor of Change at the Government of India's NITI Aayog ATL schools, and a research advisor to VIT Vellore, Pondicherry University, and other institutes across the country.
Career & affiliations
- NowLead ScientistSygnature Discovery, UK
- NowScientific OfficerZastra Innovations, Bengaluru
- NowResearch ScientistNyro Research India, Kochi
- 2020CoordinatorDrug Discovery Hackathon, Govt. of India · MHRD Innovation Cell
- —Director & Scientific OfficerZastra Innovations, Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru
- —Research AdvisorVellore Institute of Technology, India
- —Marie Curie Research FellowMolcode Ltd., Tallinn, Estonia
- —Research SpecialistProf. Mati Karelson's group, University of Tartu
- —Research ScholarProf. Alan R. Katritzky's group, University of Florida
- —Project FellowIGNOU-KU Joint Programme, University of Kerala
Honours & awards
- Joint DBT funding (with Holy Cross College) for upskilling scholars in ML for Drug Discovery, 2020
- Microsoft Award — Best Scientific Start-up Idea, Estonia, 2015
- Marie Curie Actions Research Fellowship, EU FP7 Programme, Molcode Ltd., 2014
- Vega Fond — SEB Award, Start-up Idea Pitching Competition, Estonia, 2014
- Kaleidoscope Award — Best Student Start-Up & Pitching Competition, Estonia, 2014
- Graduate School Research Scholarship, FMTDK, European Social Fund, 2013
- Research Project Funding, US Department of Agriculture — ARS, USA, 2011
- University First Rank, MSc Bioinformatics, Bharathidasan University, India, 2006
- Project Studentship on Malaria, Tamil Nadu State Council for Science & Technology, 2005
- Best Poster Award — FloHet Conference, USA, and BioDesign India