Dr. Pillai works as a lead scientist at Sygnature Discovery, UK, where he works on computational drug discovery projects. He was one of the coordinators and mentor 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 Florida with Prof. Katritzky and Prof. Karelson, University of Tartu. He has 41 peer-reviewed international journal papers, 1 US patent, drug discovery workflows, protocols and co-authored a book chapter. His expertise is in the areas of computational medicinal chemistry, ML based SAR models, mechanistic driven drug discovery, and molecular modelling. His focus on developing drug discovery related KNIME workflows and Jupyter notebooks attracted global researchers. Dr. Pillai was one of India's first researchers to study ageing and longevity targets with his team Apart from scientific positions, he is also a mentor at AIM-IIIT Kottayam and at the Government of India’s Niti Ayog ATL schools. He is a research advisor to VIT Vellore, Pondicherry University, and other institutes across the country.

Structure Activity Relationship Modelling and Lead Optimisation

Longevity and Aging

Machine Learning Pipelines

Insect Attractants/Repellents

• Coordinator - Drug Discovery Hackathon 2020, Govt. of India & MHRD Innovation Cell

• Visiting Researcher - Nyro Research India Pvt. Ltd., Kochi, India

• Director & Scientific Officer - Zastra Innovations, Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru, India

• Research Advisor - Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India

• Marie Curie Actions Research Fellow - Molcode Ltd., Tallinn, Estonia

• Research Specialist - Prof. Mati Karelson’s group, Department of Chemistry, University of Tartu, Estonia

• Research Scholar (Adj. Asst. InChrg.) - Prof. Alan R. Katritzky’s (late) group, Department of Chemistry, University of Florida, USA

• Project Fellow & Research & Teaching Associate - IGNOU-KU Joint Programme, University of Kerala, India

• Technical Consultant - Business Partner of BASF Coatings, Mumbai, India.

• Solutions Manager (Jr. Support Scientist) - Business Partner of BIOVIA (Accelrys), Cosmologic & BioSolveIT, Bangalore, India.

• Joint (with Holy Cross College) funding from DBT for up-skilling scholars in the area of ML in Drug Discovery, 2020

• Microsoft Award – Best scientific start-up idea, Estonia 2015.

• Marie Curie Actions Research Fellowship, Molcode Ltd. EU FP7 Programme, 2014.

• Vega Fond - SEB Award, Start-up Idea pitching Competition - Estonia. 2014.

• Kaleidoscope Award - Best Student Start-Up and Pitching Competition, Estonia 2014.

• Graduate School Research Scholarship, FMTDK, European Social Fund (1.2.0401.09-0079), 2013.

• Research Project Funding, US Department of Agriculture – ARS, USA. 2011.

• University First Rank Award, MSc. Bioinformatics, Bharathidasan University, India. 2006.

• Project Studentship on Malaria, Tamilnadu State Council for Science & Technology, India. 2005.

• Best Poster Award – FloHet Conference, USA and BioDesign India.

Delivered more than 2000 training sessions, FDPs, QIPs, etc

Delivered about 23 scientific sessions to school students through ATAL Tinkering Lab