Dr. P. Ramachandran

If you were searching for a group where you can do fun research while making valuable contributions to making humans lives better, your search ends here!!!

Our Focus

Our group's research interests are firmly rooted in employing the power of organic synthesis for medicinal chemistry and materials chemistry applications. To this end, we develop novel reagents and methodologies with a thorough understanding of their mechanistic aspects to facilitate the synthesis of a variety of simple and complex molecular targets.

As a member of three of Purdue's Discovery Park Centers: (i) Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery (ii) Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease, and (iii) Purdue Energetics Research Center, we have effective inter-Departmental and inter-Collegiate collaborations,resulting in scientific discoveries that positively impact the lives of humanity!

What we do

• Drug Discovery

Clostridium difficile Infection (CDI) is a major cause of hospital-acquired (nosocomial) and non-nosocomial diarrhea. New anti-biotics with improved efficacy to treat CDI are desperately needed, giving a clarion call for leadership in antimicrobial research. In collaboration with the pathobiology department at Purdue, we have identified novel aminolactones with potency equal to or better than that of the currently used bacteria-resistant drugs. We are aiming to develop our hit-molecule into a marketable drug.

• Oncology Research

We pride in our contributions to organoborane chemistry, which has become key for any successful synthesis and is increasingly being identified as pharmacophores in medicinal chemistry. One of our recent accomplishments is the development of the functionalized allylboration-aminolactonization protocol for the preparation of unnatural α-aminomethyl β,γ-disubstituted γ-and δ-lactones, which have shown potency against cancer cells, particularly pancreatic cancer.

• Energy Research

During the last decade, we made significant contributions to hydrogen energy research by developing novel methodologies to make ammonia borane and amine boranes readily available and affordable to the community. We successfully completed our fuel cells project as a replacement for heavy lithium ion batteries for field applications!

• Energetics Materials Research

The 2015 NASA Technology Roadmap for in-space propulsion technologies outlines key needs for the next generation spacecraft. Whether for NASA missions, for commercial space endeavors, or for defense applications, a key technology relates to developing easy to handle yet high performance hypergolic propellants. Hypergolic propellants ignite upon contact with an oxidizer, eliminating the need for an external ignition source. Over the past decade our laboratories have made significant contributions to the field with a highly fundamental approach, focusing on chemical structure-hypergolicity relationships, which enables the identification of key molecular features of the high performance fuels. We continue to work on discovering improved propellants. The proposed research will build on the existing collaboration between aerospace engineers and chemists using the existing capabilities at the world-renowned Purdue University Zucrow Laboratories, enabling direct comparison and characterization with state-of-the-art propellants and propulsion test facilities.

Education

• B.S., Calicut University, India, 1974
• M.S., Calicut University, India, 1976
• Ph.D., Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, 1983
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Purdue University, 1986

Awards

• Presidential Safety Award, 2016
• Team Award, 2015
• Vikram Sarabhai Chair Professor of Chemistry, 2014
• Fellow of the American Chemical Society, 2012
• Undergraduate Advising Award, 2012
• Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2007
• Boron in the Americas Award, 2006
• Research Scientist, Purdue University , 1987

Publications

List of publications