Neerav Kaushal

Neerav Kaushal serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Computing at Michigan Technological University and is a member of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC), leading the Molecular Intelligence and Drug Discovery (MIND) Laboratory where artificial intelligence advances drug design and molecular optimization.

His research program integrates:

• Generative AI for Drug Design: Creating novel drug-like chemical structures through efficient chemical space exploration.
• Explainable Machine Learning: Developing transparent frameworks that link molecular representations to physical features for trustworthy predictions.
• Cheminformatics: Building computational pipelines for molecular property analysis and virtual screening.
• Chemical Language Modeling: Applying NLP techniques to SMILES/SELFIES representations to capture structure-property relationships.
• Molecular ADMET Prediction: Estimating solubility, toxicity, and binding affinity to reduce experimental trial-and-error.

Work emphasizes representation learning to accelerate therapeutic development with synthetically feasible molecules.

Scientific Awards: No awards were documented in the provided text.

Dr. Kaushal mentors graduate students within Applied Computing; however, specific advisee names and research grant details were not disclosed. His MIND Laboratory directs student researchers toward AI-driven drug discovery innovation.

The MIND Laboratory develops foundational algorithms for molecular generation, optimization, and predictive modeling, focusing on practical tools that bridge computational innovation with real-world therapeutic development challenges.