Scientific Research & Development Team
Manit Patel, BPharmSc., MBA – Chief Technology Officer
Mr. Patel earned a Bachelor in Pharmaceutical Sciences from The Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai, India, and an MBA from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He was Director of Business Development for Sterkem Group, a Mumbai, India based pharmaceutical R&D, production, and marketing firm. At Sterkem he was responsible for business strategy and new product development, reporting directly to the Board of Directors. He successfully restructured the marketing and manufacturing operations to improve profitability. He was responsible for training a sales team of 150 sales representatives including 15 province managers. Subsequently, he was a market research manager at iData Research, an international market research consulting company dedicated to the provision of business intelligence for the medical device, dental and pharmaceutical industries. He managed global accounts for business development and consulting for cardiovascular devices and therapies. He built relationships with existing and new clients, and enhanced the growth potential of the company by working with the Analyst Team for new product development.
Mr. Patel has a broad network of international business contacts throughout the pharmaceutical sector, which will be an important resource for Verde Science as it moves forward with its growth plans. He is a creative problem solver with focus on strategic planning to ensure continuous long-term success. He excels at business development by building relationships and engaging C-Level decision makers and his excellent interpersonal skills help him relate to culturally diverse audiences and managing staff in different countries across numerous time zones.
Dr. Shantesh Hede, Ph.D. – Director of Product Development
Dr. Hede heads Verde Science’s R&D programs and is based in Mumbai, India, where he directs the program on-site with Verde’s Research and Development partner, the Institute of Chemical Technology. He earned a Ph.D. in Bioengineering Systems from the MIT Portugal Program, a Master of Engineering Management from Duke University, and a Bachelor in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Institute of Chemical Technology. Dr. Hede’s focus is to leverage the R&D platform alliances with existing partners in healthcare institutions, academia and the pharmaceutical industry for the identification and commercialization of specific formulations derived from the marijuana plant for the treatment of numerous medical conditions. His focus is to ensure Verde’s scientific activities develop applications that will produce significant intellectual property in areas of limited market competition to generate substantial value for company shareholders.
He is skilled in product development methods and decision modeling techniques for devising sustainable medical formulation solutions. His background includes working as a Research Fellow at the Asia Institute, a pan Asian think tank located in Seoul, South Korea. There he devised strategies in Open Source Collaboration for mitigating a Fukushima like crises and co-authored a white paper on the aforementioned topic. He also devised suitable risk mitigation and problem solving strategies, which incorporated a variety of technological solutions, social and economic approaches (local and national level) for strengthening Japan’s geo-political future post Fukushima. Previously, he did Doctoral Research at MIT Portugal, where he devised frameworks for decision modeling and development of medical devices. He validated frameworks for medical device companies and research labs to incorporate overall sustainability within the design phase; and devised suitable business management, corporate social responsibility and technical recommendations for reconciling conflicts between diverse sustainability criteria. This resulted in a 30% reduction in ecological impact and 8% decrease in total product cost; and a 10% reduction in time required for preliminary risk analysis of interdisciplinary projects. As a Research Analyst at TeraDisc LLC, United States, he devised suitable operations strategies to target diverse market segments for applying high performance computing (or supercomputing) tools. He helped the company develop a comprehensive perspective on market scenarios prior to diversification of its high performance computing services from drug designing applications to medical devices and drug delivery systems. As an Entrepreneur, Research Assistant and Project Manager, Dr. Hede collaborated with a team of hospital clinicians, academic researchers and government scientists on a wide range of interdisciplinary projects. These included developing business plans for indigenizing a low cost cancer therapy machine, and designing customized microelectronic devices and nanostructures for R&D applications. For this work, he received an innovation award from S. P. Jain Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai; two prestigious business plan competitions at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2004 and Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata in 2005; and two sales and development contracts from government and private institutions. Since 2005, Dr. Hede has published numerous papers in the domains of nanotechnology, socio-economic impacts of technology, evaluation of sustainability in new product development and medical device development.
Dr. Ratnesh Jain, BPharmSc., MPharmSc., Ph.D. – Scientific Researcher
Dr. Ratnesh Jain studied Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences from Rajiv Gandhi Technical University, Bhopal and Masters of Pharmaceutical Sciences from University of Mumbai, India. After working in Lupin Researh Park, India, he began his doctorate at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. During this tenure he received a Fellowship from the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India. His doctoral work was focussed on the development and evaluation of various polymeric nanocarriers like micelles, nano particles, etc. His expertise lies in the formulation and characterization of these drug delivery systems, various approaches of their targeting and their toxicity and efficacy evaluations in animal models. Subsequently, he joined the Department of Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrucken as a postdoctoral fellow. Here, he was engaged in the formulation of polymeric nanoparticles using modified excipients, for encapsulating and targeting hydrophobic anti-cancer actives. He was awarded the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship by the AvH Foundation, Germany and completed the associated research at the Department of Drug Delivery, Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), Saarbrucken, Germany. He has authored 12 publications during this tenure and has received various fellowships from the Government of India, poster prizes and travel grants for research during this tenure. He received DST-DFG (Government of India & Government of Germany) award to attend the Meeting of Nobel Laureates and Young Researchers in Physiology and Medicine 2007 at Lindau, Germany and he was also selected as a part of the Institute of Chemical Technology team to represent India at Indo‐UK Biotechnology YES (Young Entrepreneurship Scheme) at Oxford, United Kingdom. He is currently a member of CRS Inc., USA and Indian chapter and member of the Indian Pharmaceutical Association.
In January 2012, he received the Ramanujan Faculty Fellowship from the Government of India and in April 2012 he received the Ramalingaswami Fellowship from DBT, Government of India. He is associated with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Institute of Chemical Technology, Matunga, Mumbai. His research expertise includes polymeric nanoparticles, vaccines, drug delivery devices and imaging for preclinical research.
Dr. Prajakta Dandekar, BPharmSc., M.Tech, Ph.D. Tech. – Scientific Researcher
Dr. Prajakta Dandekar received her Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, M. Tech. (Bioprocess Technology) and Ph.D. (Tech.) (Bioprocess Technology) at the Department Of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. Her doctoral research focussed on nanoparticle engineering for improved drug delivery, and investigated different types of polymeric nanoparticles of natural actives. Her proficiency lies in various methods involved in fabrication of polymeric nanoparticles along with good insight into various aspects of targeting; an experience with the various characterization techniques; cell culturing and assays and experience in in vivo toxicity studies and executions of pharmacodynamic evaluations.
After her doctoral work, she was employed as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Macromolecular Organic Chemistry, University of Saarland. During this tenure she was engaged in the formulation of nanoparticles of new hydrophobic starch polymers for encapsulating hydrophobic anti-cancer actives. She is the first woman scientist from India to be awarded the European Respiratory Society-Marie Curie Joint Postdoctoral Fellowship (long-term) and she conducted the associated research at the Department of Drug Delivery, Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), Saarbrucken, Germany. Her research was focussed on the application of novel cationic polymers for intracellular delivery of siena for the treatment of Tuberculosis. She has authored 14 publications during this tenure. She has received various fellowships from the Government of India, and poster prizes and travel grants for her research during this tenure. She was selected to represent India as part of the Institute of Chemical Technology team at the Indo‐UK Biotechnology YES (Young Entrepreneurship Scheme) at Oxford, United Kingdom. She has been part of the editorial team of the CRS Newsletter, Indian chapter, and is currently a member of the Membership and Development committee, CRS Inc., USA; a member CRS, Indian chapter; a member of outreach committee of American College of Clinical Pharmacology, USA and a member of the Indian Pharmaceutical Association.
In January 2012, she was appointed as a Dr. John Kapoor Assistant Professor in Pharmaceutical Technology at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technology, Institute of Chemical Technology, Matunga, Mumbai. Her research expertise includes the design of RNA nanoplexes, pulmonary diseases, cellular models and artificial organs for preclinical research.