Journal of Advanced Chemical Engineering

SHANKALI U. PRADHAN

Biography

Scientist I at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Boston MA March 2018-present Key responsibilities: ? Contribute to development of wet and dry granulation, tablet compaction, drug product and drug substance characterization, and formulation development. ? Design, validate, and implement predictive models and advanced characterization techniques in the interest of scaling down solid oral dosage process development and streamlining formulation design. These approaches are applied to Vertex’s drug development programs from early development up through commercialization. ? Support Vertex’s drug development programs by developing a more fundamental understanding of various relationships between material properties, pharmaceutical processing conditions, and final product performance and quality attributes.

Research Interest

Doctor of Philosophy: Quality by Design in Twin Screw Granulation (TSG)  Dec 2017 Advisors: Prof. James D. Litster and Prof. Carl R. Wassgren  ? Designed fundamental rate process isolating experiments to understand the wet granule breakage process in Twin Screw Granulator for any screw design and particulate system under consideration for particle size enlargement. ? Developed understanding of granule breakage mechanisms in different Twin Screw geometries and quantified a correlation between granule properties and granulator geometry for wide range of particulate systems. ? Identified the optimum granulation conditions for achieving desired maximum particle size using TSG. ? Novel findings of research have significance for tailored particle/granule design and efficient solids processing.  ? Developed a robust and efficient mathematical model for predictive understanding of TSG. The model eliminates the need for resource consuming lab-scale experiments for any new particulate system by relying on fundamental understanding of granulation using TSG.