Born: 1962

Field : Microbiology & Virology

Many say the Pandemic is almost over and many are predicting that there is a high chance that the next wave is about to hit us! Well, it is for my readers to infer and examine what is right & what is wrong! As for today, the topic of discussion is how many of us knew that an Indian woman scientist Dr. Gagandeep Kang was involved in the Covid 19 vaccines by and was part of the core team formed by the WHO and played instrumental role in the development of Covid 19 vaccines ? Well, I certainly did not know about it !

Gagandeep Kang was born in Shimla and spent her childhood mostly in North & East India changing many schools as her father worked as a mechanical engineer in the Indian Railways.Her mother was a teacher who taught in English & History. She was interested in science since her childhood and would build a lab which her father helped in making and conducted experiment herself.

Kang completed her Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1987 and her Doctor of Medicine (MD) in Microbiology in 1991 from Christian Medical College, Vellore and obtained her PhD in 1998. After obtaining her  postdoctoral research with Mary K. Estes at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, she  returned to the Christian Medical College.

She is known for her inter-disciplinary research studying the transmission, development and prevention of enteric infections and their sequelae in children in India. She is a key contributor to rotavirus epidemiology and vaccinology in India. She is also popularly known as “India’s Vaccine godmother” due to her extensive work on vaccines and its impact.

Having published more than 300 odd scientific research papers, she is a member of many editorial boards for several journals and is a part of many review committees for national and international research funding agencies, and has served on several advisory committees mainly related to vaccines, including India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, the WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety and the Immunisation and Vaccine Implementation Research Advisory Committee.She was awarded the prestigious Infosys Prize in Life Sciences in 2016 for her contributions to understanding the natural history of rotavirus and other infectious diseases. In 2019, she became the first Indian woman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. 

She currently works as a professor in the department of gastrointestinal sciences at the Christian Medical College, Vellore.

Ms Kang is co-author of book Till We Win: India’s Fight Against The COVID-19 Pandemic, with Chandrakant Lahariya, a leading Indian medical doctor and Public policy and health system expert and Randeep Guleria, the director of AIIMS, New Delhi. The book is available on Amazon .

My one line takeaway: One can work relentlessly and yet many will not even know and that should never never matter.

Click the letter to read previous posts in A2Z challenge : A / B/ C/ D/ E/ F

PS: I have planned to take up non-fiction this year as my theme for the A2Z challenge, where every day in the month of April ( except Sundays) I will be writing about women in the stream of science and their contributions.  Disclaimer -The information collected is from different sources available online.

The main objective is to draw inspiration and share information about such great lives who did it, despite all difficulties in their life.

Love,

Chinmayee

I’m participating in #BlogchatterA2Z .