Dr. (Prof.) V. Ravichandiran serves in a director position at the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Kolkata. Dr. Ravichandiran has 25 years of research experience in natural product chemistry and system biology. He obtained his Pharmacy degree from Madras Medical College, India in 1990. He completed his postgraduate Degree in Pharmacognosy at The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University, India in 1993 and obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the same University in 2006. Currently, he is the Director of the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) Kolkata, India and Director (additional charge) of NIPER-Hajipur, India. He has received various awards including fellow of Association of Biotechnology and Pharmacy, India. He has 28 years of professional and research experience in the fields of pharmacy, drug discovery, and natural products. Under his leadership, NIPER Kolkata has started a synthetic biology program to produce pharmaceutically important small molecules in engineered yeast acting as cell factories. He has formed a team with experienced scientists who are pursuing the synthetic biology program at NIPER Kolkata. The CRISPR Cas system has been successfully introduced for targeted yeast genome editing. Dr. Ravichandiran has a good team of scientists and scholars working in the area of pharmacology, natural products, medicinal chemistry, pharmaceutics, drug design and pharmaco-informatics.