Shraddha Thakkar PhD, MSc, MS

Dr. Shraddha Thakkar received a master’s degree and Ph.D. in bioinformatics from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock/University of Arkansas Medical Sciences, Joint Bioinformatics program. She specialized in macromolecular crystallography, cheminformatics, and structural biology. Prior to that Dr. Thakkar received an MSc. in biotechnology from Bangalore University, India. She holds 14 international patents and multiple publications in area of drug development for radiation protection, predictive toxicology, leukemia, and atherosclerosis. Her current area of research includes development of methods and classifications to enhance the understanding and prediction of drug-induced liver injury (DILI).

Dr. Thakkar has adjunct appointments at both the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the University Arkansas at Little Rock (Assistant Professor). She was elected as board member of the MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS) in 2014 and served as president of MCBIOS from 2016-2017. She also served as the chair of Pharmacogenomics Group of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientist (AAPS) and Personalized Medicine community at AAPS. She is serving as Executive Secretary of Massive Analysis and Quality Control (MAQC) and playing multiple roles at FDA lead - Global Coalition of Regulatory Science Research (GCRSR).

Dr. Thakkar is FDA representative on Cross Training working group GCRSR that is in-charge of harmonizing training opportunities across various regulatory agencies, Executive Secretary of Bioinformatics Working Group that creates the dialogue for Bioinformatics related research across various regulatory agencies. She is the founder of Drug Discovery and Development Colloquium (DDDC) seven years back as an initiative to bring multi-disciplinary scientists under one roof to create dialogue and collaboration. This initiative has received support from AAPS as well FDA and continue to grow as a reoccurring annual gathering.