Madhavan Radhakrishna Pillai (born 18 August 1960) is an Indian cancer biologist and the former director of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology.

[4] Returning to India, he joined the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram in his home state where he served as the head of the Department of Molecular Medicine, Drug Development and Chemoinformatics.

[5] As the head of RGCB, he coordinated with Emory Vaccine Center of Emory University on a program of drug development for Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 and the initiative was successful in developing a peptide found in the skin mucus of Hydrophylax bahuvistara, a species of a frog common in the Western Ghats.

He has been one of the principal investigators of a program of the Department of Biotechnology for developing a mouthwash for oral mucositis based on various plant extracts for which patent is pending.

[12] He holds a patent for Novel porphyritic derivatives for photo dynamic therapy (PDT): A process for the preparation and thereof and their use as PDT agents and fluorescence probes for biological applications, a process jointly developed along with his colleagues at RGCB.