Sumit Chanda is a leading infectious disease researcher who studies how immune system responds to pathogen challenge and how pathogens evade the immune surveillance, with an eye toward prevention and treatment. He helped discover elaborate strategies employed by innate immune system to detect HIV-1 infection. He earned his doctorate in molecular pharmacology from Stanford University in 2001 and received his post-doctoral training at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF). He subsequently transitioned to a Group Leader position and established his research group in the Division of Cellular Genomics at GNF. In 2007, he joined the Infectious and Inflammatory Disease Center at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Professor in 2013. In 2015, he was appointed Director of the Immunity and Pathogenesis Program at Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. In November 2021, he joined the Scripps Research Department of Immunology and Microbiology and its nonprofit drug discovery and development division, Calibr, focusing on preparedness for future pandemics.