Sheela Nampoothiri, head of paediatric genetics at Amrita Hospitals in Kochi, has been named co-chair and member of the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) Rare Diseases National Consortium, which is an expert council established to conduct research on rare diseases.
She earned a Dip NB in Paediatrics from Trivandrum Medical College in 1993 and a first-class MSc in Medical Genetics from Duncan Guthrie Institute of Medical Genetics, Yorkhill Hospitals, University of Glasgow in 2005.
She has served on many panels, notably as a member of a task group on human genetics and genome analysis for the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, from 2017 to 2020.
Other members of the expert committee include Dr Ratna Puri from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi, who was appointed as the chair person. Dr Ashwin Dalal, Center for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) in Hyderabad, Dr Mamta Muranjan of KEM Hospital, Dr K S Meenakshi Bhatt of Centre for Human Genetics, Bengaluru, Dr. Neerja Gupta of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi and Dr Sujatha Jagadeesh, of MediScan, Chennai are also in the panel.