Dr. Rajesh Kumar
He has more than 14 years of post-doctoral experience in laboratory diagnostics and public health. He is a molecular bacteriologist and have received PhD degree (Microbiology) in 2009 from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi. Currently, he is deputy country director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) regional office in Oman and looking after APHL’s MENA region operations. APHL is a non-government organization working with partners like USA-CDC and WHO to promote quality laboratory services globally.
He has worked at Central Public Health Laboratory, MOH Oman for 12 years as a technical in charge of the molecular bacteriology unit and food poisoning investigation laboratory. He had been PulseNet Middle East co-coordinator since 2011 and had represented Oman & and the PNME at various national and international meetings. He was also the CDC-certified PFGE certifier for the region. He is well known public health director of the EMRO region.
He has published articles in international peer-reviewed journals. His research interests include molecular epidemiology of invasive pneumococcal disease, molecular typing/genotyping of nosocomial diseases, Carbapenem- resistant Enterobacteriaceae, and foodborne pathogens. His current interest is learning and training laboratory biologists on various bioinformatic tools to analyze whole genome sequencing data of public health importance bacteria for surveillance, detection, and prevention.
