Meet the STEM Peers- Part 3

Ragoo Raghunathan: Panelist on Careers in Business of Science

Ragoo is passionate about science and the arts. Hailing from Mysore, he got his Ph.D in Animal Sciences (neuroscience focus) from University of Hyderabad. His studies focused on studying ssDNA-binding proteins in rat brain followed by a brief neuroscience postdoc at Wesleyan Univ in CT. Here he identified and characterized isoforms of a CNS-enriched striatum enriched protein tyrosine phosphatase in rodents – which later was shown by other investigators to have important roles in various neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders like Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Schizophrenia, ischemia, Huntington’s Chorea, alcohol abuse and stress disorders.

Following this Ragoo continued an extended postdoc tenure at the Dept of Genetics at Yale University where his focus was to study immune-system related genes/proteins. His first break was into a start-up biotech company (Molecular Staging Inc) as a scientist growing into a group leader role while developing sensitive assays to detect rare intracellular and cell-surface based marker. During his tenure here, he was a co-inventor of Whole Genome Amplification technology (WGA) using isothermal DNA amplification. He was part of the team that developed, validated and commercialized the technology as a kit – eventually commercialized by Qiagen in 2004 as Repli-G.

This is when Ragoo transitioned into the field as a Technology specialist where he was responsible for presenting technical seminars, training their sales and customer support team with WGA technology and eventually transitioned into a Sales Development Manager role for Advanced Technologies (WGA and RNAi). Since then Ragoo has served roles as Research Biotech Consultant, Field Application Specialist, Business Development Executive and Head of Business Development at companies such as Sigma Aldrich (currently Sigma Millipore), Horizon Discovery Ltd and Metabolon Inc.

Currently Ragoo serves as Business Development Executive (northeast US) for Metabolon and is responsible for multi-million dollar revenue for the company annually. He has a diploma in acting from University of Hyderabad, is an entrepreneur at heart and in his free time can be found advising the commercialization of 2 start-up biotech companies in the Greater Boston area, runs his own franchise of Little Medical School, Boston and plays a ‘bad-guy’ in a Boston-based web serial called Captive. He is also on the Executive Board of the local Indian Society of Worcester, enjoys coaching and mentoring young scientists and entrepreneurs. He loves traveling, drawing & painting and lazing while watching TV when possible.