Kavita Singh

Dr Kavita Singh is the Director of the South Asia office at Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative ( DNDi). She has over twenty years of experience in Indian pharmaceutical/biotech industry, government, and not-for-profit organizations. Till Feb 2021, she served as Mission Director, National Biopharma Mission, Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a Public Sector Undertaking of Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India. An extremely ambitious project between the Government of India and World Bank has been one of the key drivers which has pushed India’s Biotech sector innovative quotient in the last few years.

Dr Singh, as a Program Director of Multi Vaccines Development Program, led this not-for-profit scientific research society with the objective to accelerate the translational development of malaria vaccines discovered at academic institutes. During her tenure, the programme successfully completed technology transfer from academia to industry, regulatory filing and conduct of two Phase I, first-in-human vaccine trials for novel recombinant malaria vaccine candidates.

In her long stint in the private sector, Dr Singh has worked with Fortis Clinical Research Limited, at Ranbaxy Laboratories and at Shantha Biotechnics Private Limited, Hyderabad (now Sanofi Healthcare India Pvt Ltd.).

She holds MBBS degree and MD in Microbiology. She also did an Executive Program in Business Management and Postgraduate Diploma in Epidemiology. Dr Singh is a life member of the Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists and Indian Society of Clinical Research.