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Dr Naveen Kumar has been appointed as director of the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Virology (ICMR-NIV). He will take charge in two weeks, senior ICMR officials said.
Currently, Dr. Sheela Godbole, Director of ICMR-National AIDS Research Institute (ICMR-NARI), serves as Director-in-Charge of the country’s premier virology institute. She held the additional charge for the last 15 to 16 months.
Dr. Naveen Kumar, Director, National Veterinary Culture Center, ICAR-NRC on Equines, Hisar, was the first to isolate lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) in India and developed the first vaccine against Indian lumpy skin disease (Lumpi -ProVacInd), which has been commercialized and the technology transferred to at least four major Indian vaccine manufacturers.
He also isolated wild-type, Delta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 from human patients and developed ANCOVAX, a vaccine to prevent coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection in animals. India became the third country, after the United States and Russia, to develop the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for animals.
Dr. Kumar is a noted virologist who has made some basic and fundamental contributions in the area of virus-host interaction. He has also been a fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at the Department of Diagnostic Virology of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, Insel-Riems, Germany, where he studied the persistence of the foot-and-mouth disease virus in cattle.
He was also a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, USA, where he worked on understanding influenza virus interactions with host cell signaling pathways, as well as developing a of reverse genetics and an animal model for the Pichinde virus, a model virus to study the pathogenesis of the Lassa hemorrhagic fever virus. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Infection and Pathway Medicine, Edinburgh Medical School, University of Edinburgh, UK.
Dr. Kumar hails from Alwar in Rajasthan and has received several awards including the Award for Excellence in Agricultural Research for the development and commercialization of India’s first LSD vaccine (Lumpi-ProVacInd) (2023); India Animal Health Awards 2023 (Young Scientist) for his exemplary contribution to the growth and development of animal health in India (2023); the Commonwealth Professional Fellowship of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, United Kingdom (2016); Social innovation.