Ranga Udaykumar

Prof. Ranga obtained a PhD from The Jawaharlal Nehru University, School of Life Sciences, Delhi, India in 1990 for the immunochemical characterization of the soluble antigens of Mycobacterium tuberculosis under the supervision of Prof. Rajiv K Saxena. During the first post-doctoral training with Dr. Indira K Hewlett, CBER, Food and Drug Administration, USA (1991-1993), he developed and optimized multiplex amplification detection of HIV-1 and HIV-2 co-infections. During the second post-doctoral tenure with Dr. Gary J Nabel, University of Michigan (1993-1997), Ranga played a pivotal role in evaluating the efficacy of a gene therapy strategy to protect HIV-infected T-cells in the first FDA approved clinical study. Additionally, he developed an HIV-1 chimera promoter under the control of the CD4 enhancer with an aim to restrict gene expression of therapeutic genes to the CD4 cell. He established an HIV laboratory at JNCASR, Bangalore in 1997. Prof. Ranga has been working with HIV for the past 25 years. He successfully administered and is currently administering several research projects (e.g. staffing, research protections, budget), collaborated with other researchers, and produced several peer-reviewed publications from each project.  He is a member of the Trainee Selection Panel, AIDS International Training and Research Program of the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, New York. He is also a member of various other  National and International societies such as the American Society of Microbiologists, International AIDS Society, National Immunology Society and Molecular Immunology forum.