Professor Kanta Subbarao

Professor Kanta Subbarao is the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza and Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity of , the University of Melbourne. Previously, she was Chief of the Emerging Respiratory Viruses Section of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, NIAID, National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States from 2002-2016 and chief of the Molecular Genetics Section of the Influenza Branch at the US CDC from 1997 to 2002. 

Professor Subbarao is a virologist and a physician with specialty training in pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases. She received her M.B.B.S. from Christian Medical College (Vellore, India), completed training in pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases in the United States, earned an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and received postDral training in the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, NIAID, NIH. Over the years, Dr. Subbarao’ s research has focused on newly emerging viral diseases of global importance including seasonal and pandemic influenza, SARS, MERS and now, SARS-CoV-2. Her current research efforts are directed at understanding the biology and immune responses to influenza viruses and vaccines and SARS-CoV-2.

Professor Subbarao has authored 216 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals including Science, Nature, PNAS and the Journal of Virology, and 84 reviews or chapters, a majority on influenza, SARS and SARS-CoV-2. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America and is a member of the American Society of Microbiology, American Society for Virology and Australasian Virology Society.  She serves on the Editorial Boards of PLoS Pathogens, mBio, Journal of Virology, Cell Host and Microbe and Med.