Neeta Pradhan

Neeta Pradhan is a Medical Microbiologist holding a post graduate degree in Medical Microbiology (MSc- Medical Microbiology) and working in the laboratory field for more than 25 years with a total experience of more than 15 years in the Clinical Research field.

She has worked as a Laboratory Coordinator at NARI (National AIDS Research Institute) Clinical Trial Unit for various NIH projects like-- HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), - AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG), - Microbicide Trial Network (MTN).

She has also handled Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) projects.

She is currently working as a TB Laboratory Manager at Center of Infectious Diseases -India (CIDI) in Pune, India to overlook all the work that is carried out at the BJMC- CTU CRS site as well as all the other sites that collaborate with JHU. She is responsible and gives technical and TB laboratory support for all the TB network studies for ACTG/IMPACCT (International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network) as well as all the non-network studies (collaborations with various international /national universities & institutions) conducted at BJMC site.

Besides International Network protocols she also provides TB lab support for NIH, USA-DBT, India funded Adult (CTRIUMPh, RePORT) and NICHD funded Pediatric TB (TBM Kids Trial) studies and is also involved in TB vaccine trial (VPM 1002) funded by Serum Institute, India and the Shorter Treatment for Minimal TB in Children (SHINE)trial funded by Joint Global Health Trials Scheme of the Department for International Development, UK, the Welcome Trust, and the Medical Research Council at the University College London, UK.

As a Laboratory person and Clinical researcher, she has worked on the pediatric TB meningitis treatment trial and observational TB cohort studies. As a part of the observational TB cohorts, also participated in studying the nutritional, clinical, diagnostic correlates and advanced biomarkers for TB disease and infection in the pediatric population. She has worked on studies on pregnant women in collaboration with NICHD.

She has completed the “Multicenter Study of the Accuracy of the BD MAX™ MDR-TB assay for Detection of M. tuberculosis Complex and Mutations Associated with Resistance to Rifampin and Isoniazid” which was done in collaboration with NIH and Becton Dickinson Company.

She is a member of the RePORT Consortium laboratory working group, the Basic Science group, as well as a Voting member of the Laboratory Technologist Committee (ACTG) studies involving TB and pregnant/non pregnant women with or without HIV.

Besides providing technical support to the clinical trials she also manages the laboratory which includes overseeing the daily activities as well as quality management, SOP writing, training of staff facing audits, overseeing the external Quality Assurance programs to name but a few.