Dr. Sikta Pradhan

Dr. Sikta Pradhan, an accomplished pharmacologist and biochemist passed away in her home in Bethesda, Maryland on July 17th, 2022, at age 82, from heart failure, a result of ongoing complications from interstitial lung disease.

Dr. Pradhan was born in Calcutta on January 14, 1940 to Janaki and Sibani Ghosh. Her father strongly believed in higher education and was committed to ensure his five daughters had the same access to an education as his two sons. Sikta and her sister Swapna were the first in their family to go to college and were exceptionally bright students. After earning a full scholarship to study abroad, Sikta migrated to the U.S. in 1965 with little more than twenty-dollars in her pocket and an unbreakable spirit.

Through courage, motivation and discipline, Dr. Sikta Pradhan emerged as one of the first minority female researchers working in the biochemistry field at the National Institute of Health in the early 1970s, working under Nobel laureate C.B. Anfinsen while earning her Ph.D. from Catholic University. She would later go on to work for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research for the Food and Drug Administration and pioneer the development of generic drugs.

Dr. Pradhan and her late husband Dr. Sachin Pradhan left a thriving legacy towards biomedical research and dedicated their lives to the pursuit of knowledge, advancement of scientific technologies and the higher education of others. Their lifelong philanthropic efforts include the Nandigram Bhutnath Institute of Technology in West Bengal, the S. N. Pradhan Centre for Neurosciences research facility at the University of Calcutta, the Pradhan Professorship in Spine Surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, as well as the Ortho/Neuro/Trauma unit at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland which is named after her and her late husband.

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