Dr. Akhilesh Pandey obtained his medical degree from Armed Forces Medical College, Pune and completed his residency in Pathology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, U.S.A. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A. in Molecular Biology. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Harvey Lodish at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, U.S.A., where he used computational and molecular biology tools to clone and characterize a novel cytokine receptor. Later, as a Visiting Scientist in the group of Prof. Matthias Mann at the University of Southern Denmark, he used mass spectrometry-based proteomic methods to identify several novel signaling molecules.

He is currently an Associate Professor at the Institute of Genetic Medicine and the Departments of Biological Chemistry, Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Pandey oversees the research performed at the Institute of Bioinformatics as the Director. His areas of interest are signal transduction, mass spectrometry for studying biological processes as well as for annotation, protein-protein interactions, post-translational modifications, databases and bioinformatics.

Dr. Pandey has received numerous prestigious awards including the Experimental Pathologist-In-Training Award by the American Society for Investigative Pathology, Howard Temin Award from the National Cancer Institute, Sidney Kimmel Scholar Award by the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research and the Beckman Young Investigator Award by Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. He has recently received the Era of Hope Scholar Award by the United States Department of Defense which is "intended for exceptionally talented, early-career scientists who have demonstrated that they are the best and the brightest in their field(s) through extraordinary creativity, vision, and productivity, and who have shown a strong potential for leadership in the breast cancer community as well as a vision for the eradication of breast cancer."