Inventors and Innovators: Arun Ghosh

Purdue graduates, faculty and staff continue to develop innovations and breakthroughs that help move the world forward. Purdue Today will highlight these inventors and innovators by featuring two each month in the Purdue Today newsletter and on social media.

Today, we are featuring Arun K. Ghosh, the Ian P. Rothwell Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Purdue.

He created a molecule that was developed into the first FDA-approved treatment for drug-resistant HIV.

Ghosh was born in Calcutta, India. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1979 from Calcutta University and his master’s degree in chemistry in 1981 from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. He received his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1985 from the University of Pittsburgh.

He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University from 1985 to 1988 and then joined Merck Research Laboratories at West Point, Pennsylvania, as a medicinal chemist. In 1994, he became an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He joined the Purdue faculty in 2005.

 The Inventors & Innovators website contains Purdue alumni from business and industry; technology; medicine and health; and the food and consumer industries.