Dr. Chetan Chitnis is an M.Sc., 1983 graduate from the Dept. of Physics. He received his Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of California-Berkeley in 1990. He completed postdoctoral training in the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

He received the 1995 ICAAC Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Microbiology, the 1997 B.N. Singh Memorial Award from the Indian Society of Parasitology, and the 2000 and 2001 M. O. T. Iyengar Awards for Research in Malaria by the Indian Council of Medical Research. He also received the Bhatnagar Award in 2005.

Currently he is a Sr. Research Scientist in the Malaria group at International centre for Genetic Engg. & Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi. He is today, one of the foremost scientists in the world, working in the area of malaria vaccines.

He has raised independent international funding for his research, thereby contributing significantly to the development of his science (and young scientists) in India.