Professor Sitara Swarna Rao Ajjampur

Christian Medical College, Vellore

Sitara completed her MBBS and MD before joining the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory at the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, in southern India, in 2005. She carried out doctoral research jointly at CMC Vellore and Tufts Medical Center, Boston, and postdoctoral research at the National University of Singapore and then established an independent, multi-disciplinary research group focused on the epidemiology, impact and prevention of endemic parasitic and enteric bacterial infections, including Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Campylobacter and  soil-transmitted helminths. Her group carries out these translational studies (cross-sectional surveys, birth cohorts and trials) in geospatially mapped and censused communities, combined with high-throughput laboratory testing. She also supervises clinical parasitology diagnostics for CMC hospital, develops molecular diagnostics for parasitic infections and launched an EQAS program for parasitology in India. Sitara has received a NIH Fogarty Emerging Global Leader Award, leads one of seven NIH-funded Tropical Medicine Research Centers and has secured recognition as an ICMR Collaborating Centre of Excellence for STH and helminth NTD.