Chetan Eknath Chitnis is working as a Principal Investigator with the malaria research group in International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in New Delhi.
Education
In 1983, Doctor Chitnis completed his Master of Science in Physics at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Then, he went on to complete his Master of Arts in Physics at in 1985. In 1990, he completed his thesis in Biophysics to obtain the degree of philosophy from University of California-Berkeley.
Career
Doctor Chitnis"s work is predominantly in the areas of molecular parasitology and vaccine development for malaria by understanding the molecular and cellular biology aspects of host-parasite interactions.In the fight against malaria, his work was very important in developing antibodies as it shed light on the parasite binding proteins and their interactions with the Duffy blood group antigen of the host red blood cells. At ICGEB, he has also established a protein production facility for the production of malaria vaccines based on novel concepts. Doctor Chitnis is working as a Principal Investigator with the malaria research group in ICGEB. He has published over 40 international papers and has three patents pertaining to malaria vaccines.
Achievements
During the last year of his doctoral research, he won the University of California Regents" Fellowship and the Henry Kaiser Fellowship. The following year he became the Abraham Rosenberg Research Fellow. From 1991-1995, he was the Fogarty International Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda.
In 1995, he was awarded the ICAAC Young Investigator Award by the American Society of Microbiology.
In 1997, he received the Doctor B.N. Singh Memorial Oration Award from the Indian Society for Parasitology.
In the same year, he also won the MOT Iyengar Award for Research on Malaria.
From 2000 to 2005, he was the International Research Scholar at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in United States of America and the International Senior Research Fellow at the Wellcome Trust in United Kingdom. And in 2004, Mr.
Chitnis won the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award in Medical Sciences.
From 2007 to 2010, he was the Tata Innovation Fellow. In 2009, he was elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.
In the same year, he also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. In 2010, he won the Infosys Prize in Life Sciences.
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology
Memorial Oration Award; Young Investigator Award; Infosys Prize; the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Award; Distinguished Alumnus Award
The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists in India by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to recognize scientific research.
The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists in India by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to recognize scientific research.