The Office of Dean-Research organises the 7th Eminent Guest Lecture on December 16, 2025. Prof. G Narhari Sastry, Professor , Department of Biotechnology, IIT Hyderabad, resource person for the Guest Lecture will deliver an insightful session on “Artificial Intelligence in Natural Sciences and Engineering”.
About the Speaker
Prof. G Narahari Sastry is a professor at the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Hyderabad. His research interests are working in the interdisciplinary areas of chemistry, biology, material science, software development and artificial intelligence. In the last decade, the GNS group was involved in developing indigenous software that aims to strengthen computational drug discovery called the Molecular Property Diagnostic Suite (MPDS), thereby working towards Aatma Nirbhar Bharat. Dr. Sastry has also made fundamental contributions in the field of non-covalent interaction, Bucky bowl chemistry, aromaticity, and pericyclic reaction. He has made a great contribution in open-source software development in the field of Computer-Aided Drug Discovery, databases, and web servers; all the resources developed by his group are freely accessible to the scientific community. He has published more than 340 research articles in reputed journals with an active average impact factor.
Most of his papers are well-cited, with a total of 14,900 citations, an h-index of 57, and an i10-index of 260, according to Google Scholar. Dr. Sastry and his group have mainly contributed to and maintained various web-based platforms and databases, such as a) MPDS (for several diseases), b) CAD, c) A2ID, d) PLID, e) NEI-MPDB, and f) OSADHI. He guided 31 Ph.D. and 30 Post-doctoral fellows, besides over 200 people who are involved in short-term visits. He has given over 450 lectures in both national and international conferences, invited talks and symposia.
Dr. Sastry was awarded with Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Chemical Sciences (2011) (one of the highest prizes for science and engineering in India), National Bioscience award, DBT (2009), (one of the highest for Life sciences in India), Swarnajayanti Fellowship (2005) (DST), B.M. Birla award (2001), Dr. B.C. Deb Memorial award (2009), CRSI Bronze Medal (2011), CRSI Silver Medal (2024) and Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. He is also Sir J. C. Bose National Fellow. He was a visiting professor at IMS, Japan; LMU, Munich, Germany; Jackson State University, USA, and Kyushu University, Japan. He is a Fellow of INSA (FNA), National Academy of Sciences (FNASc), Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc), Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), Fellow of Association of Biotechnology and Pharmacy, Telangana State Academy of Sciences (Founder Fellow), Andhra Pradesh Academy of Sciences (FAPAS) and also Fellow of Biotech Research Society, India (BRSI).