Swati Gupta, DrPH, MPH, leads IAVI’s Emerging Infectious Disease product portfolio and the organization's epidemiology work. She has a particular focus in leveraging IAVI’s recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) platform and expertise to expand product development efforts beyond HIV, including leading the vaccine development programs for other emerging infectious diseases such as Lassa Fever, Marburg, and most recently SARS-CoV-2.
Previously, Gupta was an executive director with Merck Vaccines, where she worked on the development of innovative partnership models to address cross-cutting issues related to vaccine science and technology. As part of this role, she worked with key external stakeholders to facilitate accelerated Ebola vaccine development efforts to enhance preparedness for the ongoing public health crisis and for potential future outbreaks.
From 2000 to 2014, Gupta was in the Department of Epidemiology at Merck Research Laboratories where she led a number international, prospective cohort studies in support of vaccine and infectious disease products in development, including research on diseases such as HIV, HPV, influenza, dengue, and C.difficile. From 1998 to 2000, Gupta worked as a scientist in HIV Surveillance at the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (British equivalent of the U.S. CDC) in the U.K. She has also worked at the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control at the New York City Department of Health.
Gupta holds a doctorate in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Master of Public Health in infectious disease epidemiology from Yale University School of Medicine.