Dec 27, 1999

Kanury V.S. Rao, 41
Immunologist

BORN AGAIN BIOLOGIST

The fact that he's the head of the immunology group at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Delhi, sits easy and casual on Kanury Rao's shoulders. That he is recognized globally for his work on the immune response of the human body is something Rao accepts with quiet dignity. Perhaps it is because he always thought he was born to be something else: Rao desperately wanted to become a writer.

For somebody trained in organic chemistry-from MS University, Baroda-the human body's immune response is an unlikely interest. But to Rao biology is where the excitement is. " Immunology will be the science of the next century," he says. Something that really changed Rao  was his stint at Johns Hopkins University in the US where he worked on environmental chemistry, and the next three years doing microbiology at the University of California, Los Angels. The chemist was gone, the biologist- and a fine one- was born. Soon after that he came back to India and joined the ICGEB where he sees him self going into vital vaccine work. "Whatever you do, in the US you'd always be a second-class citizen, here it's like the best of the both the worlds," he says. This world is waiting.

 -Subhadra Menon

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