Bio
Dr. Shirin Kalimuddin is a senior consultant with the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH), and is a faculty member of the Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School. Her research focuses on infectious disease outbreaks and emerging infections. Her goal is to combine clinical epidemiology with deep molecular investigations to define the aetiology and identify potential therapeutic strategies to control outbreaks. This goal is exemplified by the investigation into the large 2015 Group B Streptococcal outbreak in Singapore, which she led. Detailed molecular epidemiology findings pinpointed consumption of raw freshwater fish as the cause of the outbreak - changes in public health regulation led to curtailment of the outbreak.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she has played a key role in a multi-institutional research collaboration to study the immunopathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2. These investigations have led to insights on how host response to viral infection shapes disease outcome, which has led her to now explore novel therapeutic strategies that modulate host response to infections. Her ability to translate insights from host response studies into therapeutic strategies recently received a boost as she was awarded the National Medical Research Council Transition Award in 2019 to develop new antiviral strategies for pandemic response. Dr. Kalimuddin has co-authored over 50 research papers, and has published in authoritative journals such as NEJM, Nature and The Lancet.
Education
Master of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University, United States
Member, Royal Coll of Physicians
Royal College of Physicians, UK, United Kingdom
Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery
King's College London, United Kingdom