Building Global Health Research from India for the World

Dr. Gagandeep (Cherry) Kang is responsible for leading the newly formed team at the Gates Foundation and executing against its three strategic focus areas: Enteric & Diarrheal Diseases, Diagnostics, and Genomics, Epidemiology, & Modeling. Previously, in addition to serving on the foundation’s Scientific Advisory Committee, Cherry has been a Professor in the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore, India. She is a physician scientist working on vaccines and public health, particularly focused on children and enteric infectious disease in India. Her research ranges from water and sanitation to vaccines and nutrition, and her team is one of the strongest multidisciplinary research groups in India, internationally recognized and consistently funded by the Wellcome Trust, the National Institutes of Health, and more recently, the foundation. While based at CMC for most of her career, she also worked for the Government of India, leading and building India's first translational health science institute. She has served on WHO headquarters, WHO Southeast Asia and Indian committees related to vaccines, covering policies and introductions, and in more technical areas, safety, new product development, modeling and biological standardization. She has been a mentor and guide for women at work and outside of work.

Dr. Glen N. Gaulton (PSOM Vice Dean and Director, Center for Global Health, Professor of Pathology and Lab Medicine) oversees the full scope of global heath activities at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, with a mission to improve health equity worldwide through improved awareness and access to care, discovery and outcomes-based research, and comprehensive educational programs grounded in partnership. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Gaulton served for 16 years as the lead scientific officer of the Perelman School, where he supervised all aspects of the School's research and research training enterprise and was responsible for both stimulating new research endeavors and providing the optimal intellectual and administrative support for ongoing research and education programs. Dr. Gaulton's research interests are in the area viral pathogenesis, early detection of pathogen infection, and outcomes research in global health. He has published over 100 manuscripts and texts, and directly supervised the research training of over forty students and fellows. Dr. Gaulton has received numerous awards for teaching and research, including the Dean's Award for Basic Science Teaching, the Berwick Memorial Teaching Award, the Lindback Award, the Harry Weaver Neuroscience Scholar Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the Leukemia Society Scholar Award.

Dr. Sara Cherry (John W. Eckman Professor of Medical Science) is the John W. Eckman Professor of Medical Science in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, she has established the High-Throughput Screening Core, became the Director of the Program for Chemogenomic Discovery, and is leading the RNA Therapeutics Group at the Institute for RNA Innovation. Dr. Cherry's research focuses on the interface between viruses and hosts. She has pioneered the use of high-throughput cell-based screening to study viral infections focusing in emerging RNA viruses. This includes arthropod borne viruses such as dengue and west nile virus, and more recently respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2. Her lab has discovered host proteins that promote infection and innate immune mechanisms by which cells sense and respond to infection. In addition to identifying cellular factors involved in infection, her lab is using high-throughput screening to identify antivirals active against these diverse RNA viruses. She has expanded her screens for new antiviral against major classes of respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2, paramyxoviruses, influenza and henipaviruses working with government agencies, non-for-profits, and pharma. Recently, the Cherry lab has extended their studies to precision medicine and oncology and has developed a pipeline to test patient tumor cells for sensitivities to chemotherapeutics in an effort to personalize treatments.

Dr. Surbhi Grover (Associate Professor of Radiology and Oncology, HUP) is an Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology, Director of Global Radiation Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at University of Botswana. She is interested in addressing the growing global cancer burden by focusing on public health endeavors and cost-effective clinical initiatives to improve access to care and outcomes of care in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Since 2011, Dr. Grover has been working with the Botswana-UPENN partnership, strengthening the oncology program in Botswana. She moved full-time to Botswana in 2014. In her current role, she is seeing cancer patients at the public hospital, conducting research and teaching. She led the implementation of a U54 NIH-funded study focused on cervical cancer and is involved with mentoring several junior investigators at the University of Botswana through the mentoring core of U54. She also has several grants through NCI and other bodies focusing on cervical cancer in Southern Africa and India. Dr. Grover has led the development of the first gynecological cancers multi-disciplinary tumor board to streamline patient treatment and follow up care in the country, which is now being replicated in other settings in Africa.

Host or Publisher Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania