Vivek Lawana

Dr. Vivek Lawana is currently working as senior study director at world leading medical device CRO, NAMSA. Dr. Lawana received his Bachelor in Pharmacy degree from India in 2008 and MS in Pharmacology/toxicology degree from Long Island University in 2012. He completed his PhD from Iowa State University in 2018 and postdoctoral training from Purdue University in 2019. Dr. Lawana’s doctoral and postdoctoral research involved understanding the role of pesticide and food-derived toxicants in Pakrinson’s diasese (PD) pathogenesis. Using advanced molecular biology and mechanistic toxicology technique, his work demonstrated the role of c-Abl kinase enzyme in causing neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration in preclinical lab PD models. His work was published in several top peer-reviewed journals and he also received many national awards from Society of Toxicology for his research.
Since 2019, Dr. Lawana has been with NAMSA working as study director and subject matter expert for toxicology. In his current role, he works with Sponsors (i.e. medical device and biotech industries across the world) to design, execute and determine the safety for their therapeutic product using small and large animal models (nonclinical). As study director he has lead several of such risk assessment study over the years ranging from class III implantable devices to small molecule pharmaceutical drugs and biologics (gene therapy).

Beside this, Dr. Lawana has been a leader in various SOT committees. He is a stout advocate for increasing diversity in STEM field and has volunteered on various such task force. Importantly, he has also been serving as mentor for SOT’s commitment to diversity initiative program since 2012. He has mentored more than 50 undergraduate students through this opportunity.

2022-2023 Mentee: Melissa Rosas
2023-2024 Mentee: Erin Fordham