AI & Automation Leadership · Biopharma R&D

I build and govern agentic AI for the places where the rules are strictest.

Senior AI and automation leader in biopharmaceutical R&D, and a data-science PhD. I turn ambitious AI into systems that pass audit, earn trust, and actually ship.

View my work
Bharadwaj Popuri
Role
Senior Director, Automation & AI
Domain
GxP-regulated AI · Agentic systems
Research
PhD, Data Science
Based
Pennsylvania, USA
Status
Open to conversations

What I do

Where I put my expertise to work.

01

Agentic AI & multi-agent systems

Designing AI that does real work end to end — with humans kept firmly in the loop where it counts.

02

AI governance for regulated environments

Turning GxP, 21 CFR Part 11, and emerging AI regulation into controls teams can actually operate.

03

Hyperautomation & intelligent workflows

Combining automation, ML, and LLMs to remove manual effort without removing accountability.

04

AI strategy & operating models

Setting the architecture, economics, and governance that let AI move past the pilot and last.

Agentic AI is an escalation pattern, not a default. Exhaust the simpler approach first — reach for the complex one only when the value genuinely requires it.

— Operating principle

Portfolio

Selected projects, prototypes & experiments.

Interactive tools and explainers on agentic AI decision-making, unit economics, and AI-first architecture — all live on GitHub Pages, one click to open.

P·01
Shipped

Agentic Decision Wizard

“Should we build this?” — a six-step decision walk-through for agentic AI initiatives. Answers the questions cost models don't ask, and returns a structured view of whether to build, configure, buy, or defer — and which governance bodies belong in the loop first.

Agentic AIGovernanceDecision Framework
P·02
Shipped

AI Unit Economics — Cost Levers

An interactive companion for understanding agentic AI cost levers: six business-friendly sliders, three preset scenarios, three pricing surfaces. Moves the conversation from “AI is expensive” to “here are the levers.”

Unit EconomicsCost ModelingInteractive
P·03
Shipped

Agentic AI — Decision & Cost Wizard

A demonstration of disciplined AI architecture decision-making: choose the simplest pattern that solves the problem, and price the true cost of an agentic system before building it.

Agentic AIArchitectureCost Modeling
P·04
Shipped

AI-First Architecture Explorer

An interactive, client-side explainer that turns a static target-architecture slide into an explorable experience — documenting the future state of an AI-first life-sciences platform and making the semantic AI layer (ontologies → knowledge representation → models → inference) explicit.

AI ArchitectureLife SciencesSemantic AI

Live Applications

Working software you can open and try.

Full-stack applications deployed on Render, built for regulated-industry workflows — open one and use it right now. Not screenshots: the real thing.

A·01
Render Live

LLM Evaluation & HITL Review

A production-grade LLM evaluation and human-in-the-loop review application for regulated industries — GxP-aligned quality monitoring across pharma R&D use cases, packaged for one-click deployment on Render.

LLM EvaluationHITLGxP · Part 11
A·02
Render Live

Informed Consent Form Analyzer

An AI-powered proof of concept that analyzes clinical-trial Informed Consent Forms to classify participant consent for future and secondary data use. Returns structured, audit-ready results with confidence scoring and human-review flags — decision support, not legal advice.

FlaskClaude APIClinical Trials
A·03
Render Live

Metabolite Structure Explorer

Upload a cancer metabolite panel as CSV — the app auto-resolves each compound to SMILES via PubChem, then predicts co-folded 3D protein–ligand structures with the NVIDIA NIM OpenFold3 API.

FlaskPubChemNVIDIA NIM
A·04
Render Live

Supplier Onboarding HyperAutomation

A production-grade Flask application for pharmaceutical supplier onboarding — replacing a manual, nine-system procurement workflow with an intelligent orchestration layer powered by Claude.

FlaskClaudeHyperautomation

Thought Leadership

Essays on AI, governance, and building things that last.

The latest writing, pulled automatically from my Substack — where AI, automation, RPA, and BPM meet biopharma, from agentic systems and governance to M&A and valuations.

Domain

Built for high-stakes, regulated work.

I work where AI has to be both ambitious and accountable — pharmaceutical R&D, pharmacovigilance, and other settings governed by GxP and 21 CFR Part 11. That means evidence over hype, controls over shortcuts, and architectures that hold up when the context gets long and the audit is real.

Focus — GxP · 21 CFR Part 11 · Pharmacovigilance · AI governance · NIST AI RMF · ISO 42001 · LLM evaluation & HITL · FinOps for AI · CoE design

Background

More than a decade across AI, automation, and biopharma.

Now
Senior AI & automation leadershipGlobal biopharmaceutical R&D — Agentic AI, Governance, and intelligent automation.
Prior
Director, Digital Transformation — IQVIAEnterprise transformation across life-sciences data and technology.
Prior
Management Consultant — DeloitteConsulting for Life Sciences & Healthcare across Pharma, Data, and Digital Transformation programs.
Research
PhD — Harrisburg University of Science & Technology Data science research, with published work on biomarkers and applied ML in healthcare. orcid.org/0000-0002-2979-5199

Connect

Let's find a time.

Open to conversations on AI strategy, governance, and agentic systems in regulated industries — and the occasional good problem. Pick a slot below, read my writing, or reach out on LinkedIn.

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