Rate My Professor Praveen Nekkar Rao

Praveen Nekkar Rao is an Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo, with cross-appointments to the Department of Biology and the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science. He specializes in medicinal and bioorganic chemistry, with a focus on rational drug design aided by molecular modelling techniques and small molecule synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry. His research includes method development, solid phase peptide synthesis of bioactive peptides and peptidomimics, modern analytical techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy, and high performance liquid chromatography, as well as the development of high-throughput biochemical screening protocols to discover lead candidates. Research interests encompass drug discovery, rational drug design and medicinal chemistry, treatment of neurodegenerative disorders, cancer therapy, antiviral agents, theranostic materials, molecular therapeutics and theranostics, synthetic chemistry and catalysis, drug discovery, design and delivery, and clinical pharmacology.

Dr. Nekkar Rao earned a BPharm in 1995 and an MPharm in 1998 from Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, a PhD in Pharmaceutical Science from the University of Alberta in 2004, a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Alberta from 2004 to 2005, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medicinal Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute from 2006 to 2008. He has received the Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science, Government of Ontario in 2015, and Outstanding Faculty Mentor in the Graduate Program awards in 2016 and 2021-22. He serves as a reviewer for several medicinal chemistry journals and collaborates with researchers from the University of Alberta, Florida Atlantic University, and the Department of Neurology and Center for Clinical Neuroscience at Daping Hospital in China. Selected recent publications include works on amyloid-beta aggregation inhibitors and related topics in journals such as ACS Chemical Neuroscience and Medicinal Chemistry Research from 2015 onward. He teaches courses including PHARM 141 Introduction to Medicinal Chemistry, Toxicology and Pharmacology, and various Integrated Patient Focused Care courses.