Srinivasa Karra (Vasu) is our Director of Chemistry. Vasu has 20 years of experience as a medicinal chemist in oncology, immunology, and CNS therapeutic areas. He joined Avilar in August 2020. Before joining Avilar, Vasu worked at Alkermes as a Principal Scientist for about a year, working on CNS targets. Prior to that, he spent 17 years at Serono R&D Institute and EMD Serono working on various therapeutic areas, including oncology, CNS and immunology. He published over 20 research papers and was the co-inventor of 27 patents related to cancer, CNS and immunology, and reproductive health fields. Vasu received his PhD at University of Hyderabad in India working on total synthesis of natural products and did his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Missouri. He is a member of American Chemical Society and ACS Medicinal Chemistry Division.
