Viruses, Variants and Vaccines
By Shahid Jameel | 13 February 2021
Viruses are fascinating things: they aren’t exactly alive by most definitions, but they aren’t inanimate either. They are also deadly, as we can see in the current COVID-19 pandemic. But, pandemics aren’t just caused by viruses. They are the result of a complex interaction between various factors ranging from human-animal interactions to our lived and built environments. Shahid Jameel is one of India’s mostly highly regarded virologists. He shares his thoughts on why it's important to look beyond SARS-CoV-2 as the singular cause of the pandemic.
About the Expert
Shahid Jameel studied Chemistry at Aligarh Muslim University and Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, India and obtained a PhD in Biochemistry at Washington State University, USA. His postdoctoral work in Virology was at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, USA. In 1988 he set up the Virology Group at ICGEB, New Delhi, led it for 25 years and researched human viruses.
He was CEO of the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance from 2013 to 2020 and is now Director, Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University. Jameel received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and is an elected Fellow of India’s science academies.
