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Dr Malur Sudhanva

Consultant Medical Virologist

Year Qualified
1993
Qualifications
MBBS, MD, FRCPath (Virology)
Specialty
Virology

Special Interests

  • Mass testing for SARS-CoV-2 RNA
  • Operational aspects of diagnostics
  • Strategic aspects of virology diagnostics
  • Transplant virology
  • Travel-related virology

Biography

Dr Sudhanva currently has three simultaneous roles:

  1. His primary role is Consultant Medical Virologist at the South London Specialist Virology Centre, King’s College Hospital. He has held this role since 2004.
  2. Strategic Clinical Lead for Virology at Synnovis, since March 2024
  3. Honorary Senior Clinical Advisor for Public Health and Clinical Oversight (PHCO) at the UK Health Security Agency (UK HSA) since 2023.

He previously worked as a Consultant Virologist at Public Health England’s Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory. This included participating in the on-call rota for the UK as Imported Fever Service on-call consultant. He was Clinical Director of Viapath Pathology Laboratories at King’s College Hospital from 2017 to 2021. He was Chair of Panel of Examiners for Virology at the Royal College of Pathologists from 2018 to 2023.

From 2020 to 2022, he was Lead Clinical Advisor for the lab team at the Lighthouse Laboratory Network (UK COVID-19 mass testing programme) – part of the UK HSA. He was also local advisor for the UK Biocentre (established by the National Institute for Health Research and based at Milton Keynes) from 2022 to 2023.

He is originally from Bengaluru, India. He graduated from JJMMC, Davangere, Mysore University (1986 to 1992) and completed his postgraduate MD in Microbiology at the prestigious Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) in Pondicherry, India (1993 to 1996).

In the UK, he trained as Specialist Registrar in Virology at West of Scotland Specialist Virology Centre in Glasgow and gained an FRCPath in Virology in 2003. This training period included a brief time as Research Fellow at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Special Pathogens Unit, at Witwatersrand University in South Africa.

He was nominated as Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) as part of the 2022 Queen’s New Year’s Honours list, in recognition of his work for services to healthcare science during the COVID-19 pandemic.