Purdue Pharma visits Indian Institute of Technology Mandi for developing research collaborations, 22 July 2015

Delegates from Purdue Pharma L.P., a pharmaceutical company located in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, visited Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi on 21st and 22nd July, 2015. The delegation from Purdue Pharma included, Mr. Larry A. Pickett, Jr., Vice President & Chief Information Officer; Mr. Sayee Natarajan, Director, Systems Development and Business Analytics; and, Mr. Nataraj Dasgupta, Data Scientist and Senior Lead. The delegation discussed potential collaborative projects in diverse research areas with the faculty and students of the Institute.

In a talk given by Purdue Pharma to the Institute faculty and students, the company highlighted the potential of using technologies like KDB+, which could allow companies to reduce time, cost, and effort on IT projects involving large amounts of data. Later, the Purdue delegates met with faculty from different schools as well as graduate and undergraduate students located on campus.

Figure 1. Delegates from Purdue Pharma and the project team from IIT Mandi. Left to Right: Abhinav Choudhury (IIT Mandi), Nataraj Dasgupta (Purdue Pharma), Sayee Natarajan (Purdue Pharma), Varun Dutt (IIT Mandi), and Shruti Kaushik (IIT Mandi).

Figure 2. The Registrar IIT Mandi, Mr. Mohammad Shakeel, presenting the traditional Hamachali shawl and cap to Mr. Larry A. Pickett, Jr., Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Purdue Pharma.

IIT Mandi has an on-going collaboration with Purdue Pharma on a project that is worth close to USD 100,000. The project deals with machine learning and data mining for sales and analytics in pharma. The objective of the project is to study how social network analysis, patient journey and social media information could be used for finding prescribing histories and relationship among doctors in order to improve and provide the best health care for patients. Dr. Varun Dutt, Assistant Professor, School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Mandi is the principal investigator on the project. Dr. Dutt is assisted by Abhinav Choudhury and Shruti Kaushik, who are working as project staff.

The current interaction between IIT Mandi and Purdue Pharma is believed to create further research opportunities between the two organizations. Purdue is a privately held US company part of Mundi Pharma worth more than USD 4 billion that is known for its medical products such as OxyContin, Butrans, and several other products such Betadine and Senokot laxatives.

For more information, please contact:

Ms. Chandan Sharma
Public Relations Consultant (PRC)
Indian Institute of Technology Mandi
Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, India
Phone: +91-1905-237987
Email: chandan@iitmandi.ac.in

Mr. Mohammad Shakeel
Registrar
Indian Institute of Technology Mandi
Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, India
Phone: +91-1905-267015
Email: registrar@iitmandi.ac.in