Alla Venkata Rama Rao (born 2 April 1935) is an Indian inventor and chemist,[1] known for his pioneering research in the field of drug technology.
[9][10] Rama Rao was born in a Kapu family[11] on 2 April 1935 in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh[12] to a government employee as one of his nine children.
[13][5] As his father had to work at various places due to frequent transfers, he stayed with his grand parents at Guntur during his school days.
This was followed by doctoral studies under the guidance of Krishnaswami Venkataraman, the first Indian director of the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL),[14] to obtain a PhD in 1965.
[12] In 1985, he was appointed as the director of the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) (then known as Regional Research Laboratory) where he worked till 1995.
[15] After his superannuation from IICT, he founded Avra Laboratories, at Hyderabad, then capital of Andhra Pradesh, for high-end contract research and manufacture of intermediates and active pharmaceutical ingredients for the medical industry.
[3] Rao married Hymavathy[16] during his early years at NCL and the couple has two sons, Chandra and Ramakrishna,[4] both doctorate holders in chemistry, assisting their father at Avra Laboratories.
[3] He serves as the Managing Director of both companies while holding the directorship of Andhra Sugars Limited, manufacturers of industrial chemicals and supplies.
[13] Association with Corey at Harvard University shifted his focus to studies related to the synthesis of biologically active natural products and he turned his attention to antitumor antibiotics, macrolide, immunosuppressants and cyclic peptides.
[12] He evolved a new method for the construction of the spiro[2,2]-nonane system, a constituent of Fredericamycin A, a first-time achievement in the world, and succeeded in its total synthesis.
[13][21][22] Besides being a member of many government policy-making bodies, he has been associated with the World Health Organization and the Ozone Cell of United Nations Environmental Programme.