Dr Sourav Das

Dr Sourav Das has joined LVPEI in September 2024 as microbiologist in the ocular microbiology department. After completing his Master’s degree in Medical Microbiology from Kasturba Medical college, Manipal university; he joined the department of Virology, PGIMER Chandigarh as Junior Research Fellow where he worked on Respiratory viruses and Arboviral diseases. He received his Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology from the department of Medical Microbiology (Mycology division), PGIMER, Chandigarh in 2023. His doctoral research was focused on understanding the azole resistance mechanisms and its relation with stress responses in the multidrug-resistant pathogen Candida auris.

During his post-doctoral research as Scientist- C, funded by ICMR, New Delhi, at PGIMER Chandigarh, he led various multicentric projects exploring anti-fungal resistance mechanisms, development of new adjunctive therapeutic approaches for systemic Candidiasis and development of rapid diagnostics for fungal keratitis in collaboration with LVPEI. He was an integral part of several ICMR-WHO-PGI collaborative mycology workshops which provided training to clinical mycologists across the country.

Besides ICMR Junior and Senior research fellow awards, he has received several prestigious awards during his Ph.D. tenure such as: ‘Major General Amir Chand Silver medal award’ for the best research work given by PGIMER in 2023, Chandigarh, ‘Dr. G. P. Aggarwal Young Scientist award’ given by Indian Association of Medical Mycologists (ISMM) in 2022, second best oral paper in ‘Mycology section’ in MICROCON 2019 by Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists (IAMM) and Best Poster Award in MYCOCON 2018 by the Fungal Infections Study Forum (FISF), India.

His research is focussed on developing rapid diagnostics for the detection of antifungal resistance, modalities of antifungal drug delivery, epidemiology of fungal keratitis and rare ocular fungal pathogens. Dr. Sourav has several publications in national and international peer-reviewed journals to his credits. He serves as a reviewer of several peer reviewed journals such as Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease, BMC ophthalmology, British Journal of ophthalmology and Heliyon.