Dr Arun Panchapakesan is Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at the Y.R. Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education in Chennai. His research focuses primarily on HIV-1C evolution and pathogenesis. His laboratory will address questions on HIV-1C emerging viral variants, host-pathogen interactions, latency establishment and reversal. Dr. Panchapakesan obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Genetics under the guidance of Prof. Udaykumar Ranga at JNCASR.

His Ph.D. work on HIV-1C reverse transcription addressed why sequence-motif duplications are more frequent in HIV-1C and this central idea forms the basis of the research questions that his laboratory will work on.