Gagandeep Kang

Gagandeep Kang FRS (born 3 November 1962) is an Indian public healthresearcher who has been leading the work on enteric diseases, diagnostics, genomics and epidemiology at the Gates Foundation since 2023.

Kang was on the faculty of the Christian Medical College, Vellore from 1991 to 2023 when she retired as a Senior Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India. From August 2016 to August 2020, she was the Executive Director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. Her major research focus is on viral infections in children, and the testing of rotaviral vaccines. She also works on other enteric infections and their consequences when children are infected in early life, sanitation and water safety. Her early research was on understanding the transmission and pathogenesis of infectious diseases, particularly those affecting children in developing countries. 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, and so far, the only, Indian woman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2023, she was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in recognition of her contributions to child health. She received the Canada John Dirks Gairdner Prize in Global Health in 2024 for the establishment of multiple birth cohort studies that resulted in a clearer understanding of differences in patterns of enteric infections in different parts of the world.

She has made significant contributions to policy development for vaccination and for public health, working with the Government of India and the World Health Organization by serving on advisory committees.

Kang co-authored the 2020 book ''Till We Win: India's Fight Against The COVID-19 pandemic'', with Chandrakant Lahariya, a public policy and health system expert and Randeep Guleria, then director of AIIMS, New Delhi. The book was published by publisher Penguin Random House in India. Provided by Wikipedia