After many exemplary years of service, Professor Virander Chauhan (India & St Catherine’s 1974) is stepping down from his role as Rhodes India National Secretary. The Rhodes Trust is delighted to announce that Nandan Kamath (India & Balliol 2000), who has served for several years as Deputy National Secretary, will be his successor.
It would be difficult to overstate Professor Chauhan’s impact on the Indian Rhodes Scholarships. After having obtained his D.Phil at Oxford and completing post-doctoral work in the US, he returned to India in 1979 and was immediately included in the Rhodes selection committee on which he served until his nomination as National Secretary. After participating in the selection process for 36 consecutive years, Professor Chauhan will now become the first Chairman of the Rhodes India Advisory Committee.
Professor Chauhan has worked tirelessly to broaden the outreach to Indian universities, increasing diversity of institutions and degree topics represented substantially. He has many professional achievements to his name, after completing his B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Sc. – Ph.D. from Delhi University, he was selected as a Rhodes Scholar as part of the class of 1974 and went on to complete a DPhil at the University of Oxford. His teaching and research career included working at St. Stephen's College and at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, Delhi University and finally at ICGEB, New Delhi where he was Director and Malaria Research Group Leader (1998 – 2014). His key research interest has been malaria vaccine and drug development. He worked on the first ever recombinant protein based malaria vaccine, developed entirely in India, which was tested on humans in Phase I trials and has published about 250 research papers in international peer reviewed scientific journals.
Nandan Kamath is a legal practitioner based in Bangalore, India with an independent law practice. He serves as Managing Trustee of GoSports Foundation, a non-profit working on athlete support and sports system development in India, and Trustee on a number of other non-profit boards. After having received a BA, LLB (Hons.) degree from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, he completed the BCL (with distinction) and the MSc (Eco. and Soc. History) at the University of Oxford and went on to receive an LLM from Harvard Law School. After having commenced law practice in California and subsequently worked in Hong Kong, Mr Kamath returned to India in 2006 and has been closely involved with the Rhodes selection process since then.