Professor Gagandeep Kang is a member of many WHO advisory committees, is the vice-Chair of the Board of Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and chairs the Immunization Technical Advisory Group for the WHO’s South East Asian Region. She is a Professor of Microbiology at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory at the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences of Christian Medical College, Vellore, India. Professor Kang is the first Indian and so far only woman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in the UK. She is known for her interdisciplinary research on infections, nutrition and child health. Her team has evaluated vaccines in pre-clinical and phase 1-3 clinical trials for enteric infections and coordinated multi-site surveillance studies to develop national disease burden estimates. She is investigating the complex relationships between infection, gut function and physical and cognitive development, and seeking to build a stronger human immunology research in India.
 
She will be in conversation with Professor Balaji Prakash, Professor at Biological and Life Sciences & Associate Dean, Sciences for the School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University. He studied Physics at the University of Hyderabad and made a transition to Biology at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where he obtained his PhD. Professor Prakash is a structural biologist and besides basic science his interest in interdisciplinary research has led to fascinating applications across disciplines.