Alumnus Madhukar Pai named chair of Department of Global and Public Health at McGill University

UC Berkeley School of Public Health is pleased to announce that alumnus Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD, has been appointed as the inaugural chair of the Department of Global and Public Health (DGPH) in the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University in Montréal, Canada.

Dr. Pai completed his medical training and community medicine residency in Vellore, India, before completing his PhD in epidemiology at UC Berkeley in 2004, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF.

He is a world leader in tuberculosis (TB) research and serves on the World Health Organization (WHO) Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for TB in the South-East Asia Region, as well as the WHO Advisory group on Tuberculosis Diagnostics and Laboratory Strengthening. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. His research is focused on improving the diagnosis and treatment of TB, especially in high-burden countries like India and South Africa.

In 2018, Pai was selected as one of the 75 most influential alumni of Berkeley Public Health.

“As chair of a newly created Department of Global and Public Health, I hope to build a team that can help address health inequities and advance public health, locally, nationally, and globally, through action-oriented research, interdisciplinary training, allyship, and equitable partnerships,” said Dr. Pai.

“I grew up in a small town in South India, and I am incredibly privileged to have had the chance to study at Berkeley. When I was honored as one of 75 most influential alumni of Berkeley Public Health, I had noted that my education at Berkeley was ‘life-changing,’” he continued. “Indeed, I could not have received a better start to my career than my PhD at Berkeley and my postdoc training at UCSF. This training gave me the confidence to go into academia, and get to where I am today. Thank you, Berkeley!”