(March 18, 2023) Pritam Kumar Panda had a tough childhood. A year after he was born, he lost his father. With great difficulty, his mother got a job as a primary school teacher earning Rs 400 per month. For the next 10 years, the mother and her son would stay in a hut and life was an everyday struggle. Pritam persevered and today, the researcher and computational scientist has built a life for himself in Sweden. The bioinformatics enthusiast and expert in computational methods has also forayed into entrepreneurship with his scientific management company, Nerdalytics.
A difficult childhood didn’t stand in the way of Pritam dreaming big and making his own choices. For instance, in 2008, when his peers advised him to pursue a field other than science to reduce the financial burden on his single mother, he ignored their advice and decided to pursue bioinformatics. His mother stood by his decision. It was a turning point in his life.
Pritam Kumar Panda
Finding himself in foreign lands
Sheer determination and courage took him to Germany and then to Sweden. “The challenges I faced, taught me how to be stronger in every aspect of life and not to lose hope. I am now in a position to face the world with dignity and grace,” smiles Pritam, a researcher and computational scientist with core training in bioinformatics, speaking to Global Indian.
Pritam is among the rare few who received funding from Colgate and Palmolive, USA, to carry out bioinformatics research in structure-based drug designing. He assisted the company in developing a pipeline for combinatorial synergy-based drug designing for photo-aging and hyperpigmentation.
A rocky start
Born November 1991 in Belaguntha, a small village in Odisha, Pritam and his mother moved to Baliguda after his father’s death. They used to pay rent of Rs 80 for the hut in which they lived. “My grandfather was a treasurer in a government office and helped us a lot in those days. I am forever indebted to him for his love and affection towards us,” recalls the researcher.
At the age of 11, Pritam went to boarding school, where he did his sixth and seventh grades in the native Odia language. For high school, he left Odisha and went to study at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, where he stayed until he graduated 12th grade as an All-India topper. “My focus was only on studies and sometimes extracurricular activities related to scientific activities,” recalls Pritam, who received a prize from Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam for excelling in the ‘Intel’ project conducted by NVS, Delhi. Pritam went on to study Bioinformatics in an integrated master’s programme at Buxi Jagabandhu College, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, graduating again with a gold medal. Years later, he moved to Mumbai for his double masters (Master of Technology with a bank loan of 4 Lakhs) at D Y Patil, School of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Navi Mumbai.
Learning from failure
Getting into foreign universities was a major challenge. “English was the main obstacle, as I was not very fluent in it,” says Pritam, who decided to pursue his second masters in bioinformatics simply to improve his English fluency. Before he finally made it to the EU, Pritam had applied to and been rejected from as many as 200 foreign universities! He credits some of his intellectual friends for teaching him how to speak fluent English with an accent.
Two years later, he arrived in Germany, after getting an offer from the University of Freiburg at Department of Paediatric Haematology and Oncology, University Medical Centre, Germany. For the next year-and-a-half, the Graduate scientist and NGS analyst performed next-generation sequencing analyses for cancer patients. “I learnt many computational techniques there,” says Pritam, who published one of the most impactful publications in Nature medicine in 2021.
Intersectional learning
After his tenure in Germany, Pritam finally got an offer from Uppsala University, asking him to do his PhD- in Quantum Physics! It had no connection to bioinformatics but Pritam decided to take the risk. “I decided that I will bring bioinformatics methods into quantum physics as well and I did that during my tenure as a PhD student,” informs Pritam, who made significant contributions in scientific publications by collaborating with many researchers, professors, and industry professionals around the globe.
He successfully compiled his thesis and gave a catchy moniker “GENOME2QUNOME” (an acronym for “Genetic organization of multicellular organisms and their enzymatic reaction 2 Quantum nanostructured materials for energy scavenging applications”), encompassing a combinatorial approach using computational methodologies in biophysics, bioinformatics, and nano/materials science.
Spurred on by the pandemic
In 2020, during the pandemic, Pritam started researching on COVID-19. “I started a project in drug designing aspects to find some treatments for Covid-19 and published a paper in Science Advances, which brought me worldwide recognition,” smiles the bioinformatician.
He then started collaborating with many universities and industries and got in contact with one of his colleagues at Karolinska Instituet, Sweden.
Creating Nerdalytics
“I got a position as a researcher at Karolinksa Instituet and started my research in Immunoinformatics. We successfully filed a patent and published scientific works on chronic autoimmune diseases,” says Pritam, who married Suman Mishra, his batchmate at Buxi Jagabandhu college. The couple were blessed with a boy in 2022.
So, what drove him to launch Nerdalytics? “I used to watch Shark-tank, USA and India all the time and got some entrepreneurial ideas from those shows,” smiles the CEO, who also got wondering why he was wasting his skills in publishing scientific papers for no money. “Instead, I could convert it to a start-up and have some extra income. Finally, Nerdalytics was born.”
The company provides bioinformatics consulting services with a focus on drug designing, next-generation sequencing and immunoinformatics perspectives.
There’s lots of data available and Pritam was determined to make sense of that data. “The idea was to collect, integrate data and convert into meaningful, actionable insight,” he says of the work in his company. As the CEO, he works with academics, clinics, entrepreneurs and business innovators.
“We have been passionate about achieving better results than bringing success and great fame to a brand,” he says. As word about his extraordinary work spread far and wide, Various startups from Sweden, Finland, Israel and the US starts getting in touch with him.
Hackathons
“LongHack, a Finnish startup, approached me to be a part of the team to conduct hackathons on the topic longevity and ageing. Since, I had expertise in working in this topic before, I became the scientific advisor for the company,” says Pritam, who successfully completed three hackathons in the period of 2 years.
Another Israel-based company, Breath of Health, approached him to become a part of the team and appointed him as a General Clinical Consultant in their company to assist them in writing grants for fundings. Two more startups — FIBO Labs and Analysis Mode — also approached him to be part of their scientific advisory committee as well.
When not working, Pritam loves playing computer games. “I am a very fond of Far Cry series and I have specially a setup at home for the gaming,” says the tech-savvy Pritam, who splurges money on gadgets.
